Interpretation is perhaps the key t

Interpretation is perhaps the key to an understanding of the different use to which Herodotus and Thucydides put the same evidence. Thucydides' interpretation of tradition differs from that of Herodotus in that it is based on a "preconceived theory," derived from the world around him and applied to the past for purposes of his own. In a sense, John Finley alludes to this, when he states that "the formative ideas of the History" are first expressed here. Even more explicit is the view that the purpose of Thucydides' Archaeology is "to state and develop his theory of history and thereby to justify his exclusive concern with the Peloponnesian War." If, then, the Archaeology is not merely an example but a statement of Thucydides' theory of history, and this is its purpose, it is certainly germane to the question of synthesis, and more par­ticularly to the broader generalizations that produce a synthesis, whether in the Archaeology or in the History as a whole. Before we turn to those generalizations, however, we shall first consider selection, the details Thucydides chose for narration, in order to establish precisely what he was attempting to communicate in this reconstruction of the past.