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THE 'LIVES' OF THUCYDIDES 183 true it would rehabilitate the credit of the tradition, but the evidence is crushing against it. Recent criticism of the Life is all based on an article in Hermes xii., where Wilamowitz reduces the conventional structure to its base in the facts given incidentally by Thucydides him- self plus the existence of a tomb of " Thucydides, son of Olorus, of the deme Halimus," among the Kimonian graves in Athens ; and then rebuilds from the frag- ments one small wigwam which he considers safe — the conclusion, namely, that Praxiphanes, a disciple of Theophrastus and a first-rate authority, had said that Thucydides, together with certain poets, lived at the court of Archelaus of Macedon. The argument is supported by Thucydides's own remarks (ii. 100) about that king improving the country in the way of organisation and road-making " more than all the eight kings before him together!' But it has led irresistibly to a further con- clusion.^ Not only did Praxiphanes say this, but we can find where he said it : it was in his dialogue About History* That spoils all. The scenes in dialogues are, even in Plato's hands, admittedly unhistoric ; after Plato's death they are the merest imaginary conversa- tions ; so that our one wigwam collapses almost as soon as it is built. One corner of it only remains. The dialogue, in discussing the merits of history and poetry — Aristotle had pronounced poetry to be the 'more philosophic' — pits Thucydides, the truthful his- torian, alone against five poets of different kinds ; and we can probably guess what the decision was, from the fragmentary sentence which states that " in his lifetime Thucydides was mostly unknown, but valued beyond price by posterity!' ^ Hirzel in Hermes xiii.