And yet in fact my concern is not s

And yet in fact my concern is not solely a matter of style and expression. Expression is only a sign, and its originality reveals something more personal: it forms the authors’ investment in his narrative, indicating his way of thinking about the facts, the aspects he wants to expose there, the personal form he means to give them. To attempt to define the characteristics that the exposition takes in Thucydides is thus to inquire how, starting with a variety of facts derived from his research, he manages to develop the highly coherent and personalized discourse that is his narrative, and the formal characteristics of the work ultimately define even his relationship to history. In a time when history in general finds itself to be the object of extraordinary attention, such a study may thus take on added interest. Following on the many works treating history itself, history as human endeavor, or the knowledge that can be gained from it and its limits, an analysis of the procedures actually used by a historian like Thucydides might be presented, in some manner, as both a theoretical model and its application.