This synopsis is intended to give readers a schematic guide to the contents and to enable them to locate key events and phases of the action within the overall chronology. It should be remembered, however, that the conventional division of the text into books, chapters and sections was not one created by Thucydides himself but was imposed by later editors (see introduction, pp. 17–18). I have preserved it for ease of reference to the secondary literature and for cross-reference within the text itself, but I have made it structurally and typographically subordinate to the division by years and campaigning seasons, which Thucydides himself saw as his particular innovation in the arrangement of his history (see II 1, V 20 and note on calendar, pp. lviii–lix).

[BOOK I]