[5] 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: Ἐγκώμια αὐτοῦ (sc.
[6] 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 προτέρους[7] or πρότερον,[8] 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: Διαλόγους τοίνυν φασὶ πρῶτον γράψαι Ζήνωνα τὸν Ἐλεάτην· Ἀριστοτέλης δὲ ἐν πρώτῳ Περὶ ποιητῶν Ἀλεξαμενὸν Στυρέα ἢ Τήιον, ὡς καὶ Φαβωρῖνος ἐν Ἀπομνημονεύμασι.
«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.
διαλό]γ[ους ὑ]π' [Ἀ]λεξαμενοῦ Τηνίου «...in this also imitating Sophron, the writer of mimes, for the dramatic quality of the dialogues.
Moreover, manuscript tradition of Atheneus, which transmits the fragment of On the Poets, suggests that Alexamenus is author of the first among the Socratic writings.
According to Diogenes Laërtius (II 122–123), the mysterious Athenian Simon the Shoemaker used to take note of what he remembered of conversations between Socrates and some interlocutor ([Σωκράτους] διαλεγομένου τινά, ὧν ἐμνημόνευεν ὑποσημειώσεις ἐποιεῖτο).
Still according to Diogenes Laërtius (II 48), Xenophon was the first to publish the notes jotted down in the presence of Socrates (πρῶτος ὑποσημειωσάμενος τὰ λεγόμενα εἰς ἀνθρώπους ἤγαγεν), writing ἀπομνημονεύματα.