The answer to the problem of Thucyd

The answer to the problem of Thucydides' arche for the first war can only come from reading 2.1-2 in its full context, that is, from reading it as the continuation of 1.145-146, the way in which it was in fact written. Scholars treating this question have, almost without exception, failed to perform this simple task. They have been misled by an Alexandrian scholar's editing of Thucydides' work into reading the first sentences of Book II as though Thucydides wrote them separately from Book I, as a new section of his work. And yet we know perfectly well that he did no such thing. Thucydides did not divide his work into books or even into paragraphs. The sentence beginning "Αρχεται Se, our Book II, chapter 1, followed directly upon "the events were a dissolution of the treaty and an occasion for war", the last sentence of our Book I. The particle Se in 2.1 furnishes us with the most important clue that the text of Thucydides affords for the solution of our problem. It tells us, in short, to look backwards for the meaning of … rather than forwards.