The word has the same pattern of me

The word has the same pattern of meaning in Thucydides as in Antiphon. Apart from the anomalous medical term at Il, 49, 1, all instances in Thucydides have the same subjective quality, and all derive from the same basic meaning of alleged and presumably true reason. As in Antiphon, this meaning is modified in two directions: to alleged but not true reason, i. e. “pretext." and to true but not alleged reason, "motive."( Instances at I, 126, 1 and I, 141, 1 may also belong with this group.)What has been assumed above to be the basic meaning of the word, " reason" alleged and presumably true, is well exemplified by I, 133, 1, " Pausanias came to him and asked prophasis. Nothing in the context suggests that Pausanias meant on what "pretext" the man had come; he merely asks for his motive or reason. There is no emphasis on the notion of expres sion, nor is there any suggestion of concealment. The example quoted above (p. 46) from III, 13, 1 illustrates the difference between prophasis and aitia; this will be discussed below, in our examination of aitia (pp. 56-7); for the present it is enough to notice that prophasis here refers to motives or reasons that have been expressed and can be presumed to be genuine. At V, 22, 1, when the Lacedaemonians are trying to get their allies to accept the Peace of Nicias, the Boeotians, the Corinthians, the Megareans, and the Eleans refuse to do so, "for the same reason for which they had in the first place rejected it," namely because the "arrangements did not satisfy them" (V, 17, 2). This is a perfectly candid expression of their reason, and should be so interpreted, not as "pretext," as in the Loeb version.