Athenian Ambitions and the Delian Alliance

Abstract

and suggested that by his choice of the word 7rp6TXusa Thucydides made an implicit judgement, namely that the ostensible purpose of the league was merely pretext, or cover, for the Athenians' real intentions: these intentions were create and employ power for their own purposes, (6); for a rpba6'xa is always screen for real intentions which have to be concealed for one reason or another (3); and every passage in Herodotus and Thucydides containing 7rpbo'xoa, with the single exception of