Thucydides adoxos and Praxiphanes

Marcellinus' Life of Thucydides offers us evidence concerning the of Praxiphanes which has long attracted the attention of critics. Thucydides' detailed knowledge of Macedonia could certainly suggest a visit by the historian to the region, perhaps even in connection with the parallel tradition that makes Skapte Hyle, the Thracian locale not far from Macedonia, the place of his exile. Aristotle infers, probably from the same passage, that the historian was present at the trial of Antiphon, though this conclusion certainly clashes with what Thucydides says about his own twenty-year exile from Athens in the so-called second proem. According to R. Hirzel, the theme of the dialogue would naturally have been the status of the historiographic genre, of which Thucydides would have been the spokesman, analyzed in relationship to poetry, in particular to the genres represented by the other poets: tragedy, represented by Agathon; comedy, by Plato Comicus; epic poetry, by Choerilus and Niceratus; and, finally, dithyrambic poetry, represented by Melanippides.