Antiquity and the middle ages

In the east, the genre dates back to the Rigvedic dialogue hymns and the Indian epic Mahabharata, while in the west, literary historians commonly suppose that Plato (c. 427 BC - c. 347 BC) introduced the systematic use of dialogue as an independent literary form: they point to his earliest experiment with the genre in the Laches. The Platonic dialogue, however, had its foundations in the mime, which the Sicilian poets Sophron and Epicharmus had cultivated half a century earlier. The works of these writers, which Plato admired and imitated, have not survived, but scholars imagine them as little plays usually presented with only two performers. The Mimes of Herodas give us some idea of their scope.

Plato further simplified the form and reduced it to pure argumentative conversation, while leaving intact the amusing element of character-drawing. He must have begun this about the year 405 BC, and by 399 he had brought the dialogue to its highest perfection, especially in the cycle directly inspired by the death of Socrates. All his philosophical writings, except the Apology, use this form. As the greatest of all masters of Greek prose style, Plato lifted his favorite instrument, the dialogue, to its highest splendor, and to this day he remains by far its most distinguished proficient.

Following Plato, the dialogue became one major literary genre in antiquity, and there are several examples both in Latin and Greek. Soon after Plato, Xenophon wrote his own Symposium, Aristotle is said to have written several philosophical dialogues in Plato's style (none of which have survived), and later most of the Hellenistic schools had their own dialogue. Cicero wrote some very important works in this genre, such as Orator, Res Publica, and the lost Hortensius (the latter cited by Augustine in the Confessions as the work which instilled in him his lifelong love of philosophy).

In the 2nd century AD. Lucian of Samosata achieved a brilliant success with his ironic dialogues Of the Gods, Of the Dead, Of Love and Of the Courtesans. In some of them he attacks superstition and philosophical error with the sharpness of his wit; in others he merely paints scenes of modern life.

The dialogue was frequently used by early Christian writers, such as Justin, Origen and Augustine, and a particularly notable dialogue from late antiquity is Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy. The genre survived up through the early scholastic period, with Peter Abelard composing his Dialogue with a Jew, a Christian and a Philosopher in the early 12th century AD, but later, in the wake of the powerful influence of writings by Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, the scholastic tradition adopted the more formal and concise genre of the summa, which largely superseded the dialogue as philosophical format.