In three passages of the excursus,

In three passages of the excursus, two of them reporting incidents of some complexity, Thucydides inserts the parenthesis 6cq Xdyerat or uses Xeyerat with dependent infinitives. The first passage is the story of the Argilian messenger who opened the last letter sent by Pausanias to Xerxes (132.5); the second relates how Pausanias,realizing that he was about to be arrested in the street by the ephors, ran for sanctuary to the precinct of the Brazen House (134.1); the third mentions that Artaxerxes, on receiving the letter from Themistocles, admired his intentions and urged him to put them into operation(138.1). Thucydides normally uses X to indicate that he has misgivings about the trustworthiness of his evidence. It occurs most frequently where, in writing about contemporary events, he includes a statement, usually brief, derived, it appears, from some oral source in which he is disinclined for unspecified reasons to feel complete confidence. In the passages relating to Pausanias and Themistocles X might be merely an intimation of uncertainty and is indeed interpreted as such by morden scholars.