This is, so I venture to think, the

This is, so I venture to think, the Thucydidean analysis reached in the light of what he could discern as the outbreak of war was reached. If this is so, then in the First Book we have a view of the antecedents of the war which is all of a piece, and which does not need to be explained by the importation into it of Thucydidean truest prophasis, a view which explains what we find in these parts of the book, written to elucidate, for the benefit of the future man of action.