Cercidas
Κερκιδᾶς
(Κερκιδᾶς).
1. A poet, philosopher, and legislator for his native city, Megalopolis. At his death he ordered the first and second books of the Iliad to be buried with him. (Ptol. Hephaest. apud Phot. Cod. 190, p. 1.51, a., 14, ed. Bekker.) Aelian (Ael. VH 13.20) relates that Cercidas died expressing his hope of being with Pythagoras of the philosophers, Hecataeus of the historians, Olympus of the musicians, and Homer of the poets, which clearly implies that he himself cultivated these four sciences.
Works
He was a disciple of Diogenes, whose death he recorded in some Meliambic lines. (D. L. 6.76.) He is mentioned and cited by Athenaeus (viii. p. 347e., 12.554, d.) and Stobaeus (4.43, 58.10).
Same person as Cereidas the Arcadian
He appears to be the same person as Cereidas the Arcadian, who is mentioned by Demosthenes among those Greeks, who, by their cowardice and corruption, enslaved their states to Philip. (De Coron. p. 324; see the reply of Polybius to this accusation, 17.14.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.