Alexamenus of Teos (, 5th century BC?) was one of the potential inventors of Greek literary genre of prose dialogue. Also known as Alexamenus of TenosP. Oxy. 45 3219 frg. 1 (A.D. II), ed. Haslam (1977) or Alexamenus of Styra,DIOG. LAERT. III 48 the only surviving news about him have been handed down, centuries later, by three sources: Athenaeus of Naucratis,ATHEN. XI 505c Diogenes Laërtiussee supra and a papyrus from Oxyrhynchus.see supra
Atheneus (XI 550c) reports the dual testimony of Nicias of Nicaea and Sotion, according to which Aristotle, in the lost work On the Poets (Περὶ ποιητῶν), gave Alexamenus chronological priority in the invention of dialogue:
«And his encomium (sc. of Menon) is uttered by him who despised others on the whole (sc. Plato), by banishing Homer and imitative poetry in the Republic, even though he himself had written dialogues in mimetic form, of whose form he is not even the inventor. In fact before him Alexamenus of Teos invented this kind of speeches, as witnessed by Nicias of Nicaea and Sotion. Aristotle then, in his work On the Poets, writes thus: “Then, do we not say that the so-called mimes of Sophron, written in verse, are speeches and imitations, or that those [the writings?] of Alexamenus of Teos, written first among [or: before] the Socratic dialogues, are so?”, thus asserting, that great sage Aristotle, that some dialogues were composed before Plato».
It is unclear whether the priority refers to Socratic dialogues or to dialogue in general.Michael W. Haslam, Plato, Sophron and the Dramatic Dialogue, Bullettin of the Institute of Classical Studies 19 (1972), 17-38 Some scholars accept this testimony in the form preserved by manuscripts, according to which Alexamenus wrote the first (πρώτους) among the Socratic dialogues. Others propose to correct πρώτους to προτέρουςAccording to Rose or πρότερον,According to Bake altering the meaning: Alexamenus would not be the inventor of the Socratic dialogues, but a precursor.
Aristotelian opinion is critically witnessed by Diogenes Laërtius (III 48), who also finds mention of it in Favorinus:
«So they say that the first to write dialogues was the Eleatic Zeno; but Aristotle, in the first book of On the Poets, [says that he was] Alexamenus of Styra or Teos, as Favorinus also [says] in the Memoirs. But it seems to me that Plato, having perfected the literary genre, would rightly hold the primacy, as of beauty, so also of invention».
The writer of the papyrus of Oxyrhynchus (P. Oxy. 45 3219), which probably contains a treatise on Plato and the dialogue,Michael W. Haslam, see supra confirms the news, but takes an anti-Aristotelian positionP. A. Vander Waerdt, The Socratic Movement, Cornell University Press 1994, 33 and states that the main influence on Plato comes from the Sicilian mimographer Sophron:
«...in this also imitating Sophron, the writer of mimes, for the dramatic quality of the dialogues. For one should not believe Aristotle, who, out of jealous spite towards Plato, says in the first book of On poetry [= On the Poets] that even before Plato dramatic dialogues had been written by Alexamenos of Tenos»POxy. 3219
Aristotle's view is therefore differently evaluated. However, if we believe his testimony, it seems that the literature of Alexamenos, whatever attributes it had, is comparable to the mimes of Sophron, of which little survived anyway. The basic question is: should we assume that Alexamenus was the first Socratic to have composed in a new literary genre, or that he was an earlier dialogue writer and uncoupled from Socratics and Socratic literature?N. G. Charalabopoulos, Platonic Drama and its Ancient Reception, Cambridge University Press 2012, 50-51; On Alexamenus: R. Hirzel, Der Dialog: ein literarhistorischer Versuch, Leipzig 1895, I 100-1see also:
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