This translation has no pretensions

This translation has no pretensions to literary elegance. It tries to do justice to two considerations which arise from the preceding interpretation. First in speaking of aitiai Thucydides has in mind attempts to impute responsibility. But "the most genuine cause" and "the complaints and the disputes" were things of a somewhat similar kind, in the sense that Thucydides could contrast them with one another. Therefore it should be presumed that considerations of responsibility are not wholly absent from his mind when he states "the most genuine cause." Second, the statement of "the most genuine cause" singles out the Athenians as the center of attention; therefore, insofar as Thucydides attributes responsibility in stating that cause, he attributes responsibility to the Athenians.