The eighth book is thus another exa

The eighth book is thus another example of a familiar pattern in the Histories, reopening after apparent closure. As we have seen, Thucydidean narratives, especially those focussed on the pathos or suffering of the war, often seem to draw to a close and then open up again to explore a new instance or effect of the suffering. This pattern is now transferred from the relatively short narratives in which it has most often appeared to the larger architecture of the work. In this reopening the reader swiftly encounters themes that had not been significantly treated in the Sicilian narrative, especially Athens' great endurance and the tendency of her allies and opponents to underestimate her strength and determination. The second book had already introduced this theme and anticipated the tension between it and the emphasis on the magnitude of the Sicilian disaster: