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This contribution reconsiders the question of indications of speakers in ancient Greek dialogue literature and their ‘invention’ by Theodoret of Cyrus by offering a systematic examination of the available (mostly papyrological) evidence. It discusses ancient conventions for marking changes of interlocutors in Greek literary dialogues and compares them with those present in dramatic works and in documentary and paraliterary texts such as reports of court proceedings, the Acta Alexandrinorum and Acta Martyrum, and reports of Church councils. It is hypothesized that the development of indications of speakers in Greek dialogue was influenced by documentary practices of the Imperial period and by paraliterary genres which imitated them.

In Plutarch's Convivium septem sapientium (CSS) a narration of the banquet proper is preceded by an account of the walk to the banquet of three of the participants: Thales, Diocles and Niloxenus, a messenger of the Egyptian pharaoh Amasis. Upon learning that Niloxenus brings a letter from Amasis to Bias, Thales says with laughter: εἴ τι κακὸν αὖθις εἰς Πριήνην· διαλύσει γὰρ Βίας, ὡς διέλυσεν αὐτὸς τὸ πρῶτον (CSS 146E–F: ‘if it is something bad – to Priene again! For Bias will solve it, just as he solved the first one’). Scholars have noticed that Thales’ words echo a Greek proverb, transmitted in Zenobius’ collection: εἴ τι κακὸν εἰς Πύρραν, ‘if it is something bad – to Pyrrha’. However, the purpose of Plutarch's reference to this particular proverb has thus far remained unclear. The aim of this contribution is to shed light on Thales’ words by examining the meaning of the Pyrrha proverb and suggesting an interpretation which explains the function of Plutarch's allusion to it.

This contribution argues that the principal object of interest in Plutarch’s “Greek Questions” is language and its uses, including rare words, curious phrases, local names, dialectal idiosyncrasies, proverbs, etc. The abundance of uncommon terms, frequently unattested elsewhere, and overlap in their use between Plutarch’s work and Hesychios’ “Synagoge”, suggests there is an affinity between “Greek Questions” and the ancient glossographic and lexicographic traditions.