page 26 note 1 VIII, 56, 3. Perhaps I should qualify ‘rather rare’. Thucydides uses this phrase (or
) not infrequently when he is referring to things remote in time, or to conjectural matters which obviously he cannot know quite exactly: e.g. (remote) 1, 3, 2 and 3; 9,1; 10,4; 93,7; (conjectural) II, 17, 2; VII, 87, 5; VIII, 64, 5. But in writing about the motives of a contemporary individual this instance of
is unique so far as I have found except for one other, also inspired by the behaviour of Tissaphernes on another occasion (VIII, 87, 4); unless one takes the participle
used in describing Archidamus (I, 79, 2) and Brasidas (IV, 81, 1) to mean ‘seeming to me in my judgement now’, and not ‘seeming to their contemporaries and associates at the time in the past that this reference to them applies to’—the second being the meaning that syntactically ought to be given to these participles, since they appear in sentences where the main verbs arc in past tenses. (At II, 18,3 and V, 46,4 the ‘past’ significance is quite clear.) The famous 
of I, 22, 1 conveys the same notion of probable truth arrived at by the use of judgement, this time in a multiplicity of cases, as is conveyed at VIII, 56, 3 and 87, 4 for the single case of Tissaphernes.
A variant
is used also of events of the remote past (I, 24, 4; 132, 5, cf. 134, 1; 138,4
; II, 102, 5; VI, 2, 1), but sometimes too of events of ‘the War’ (I, 118, 3; II, 18, 5; 20, 1; III, 79, 3; IV, 104, 2; VII, 86, 4 and VIII, 50, 3
; VIII, 87, 2). It is natural to think that Thucydides did not regard these ‘accounts’ as establishing the truth (at VIII, 87, 2 this is self-evident), whereas
means that he thinks he has arrived at the probable truth. Yet at II, 20, 5 he seems to accept the ‘account’ (
) of ibid. 20, 1 as established. See further, in general, Pearson, L., T.A.Ph.A. LXXVIII (1941), 37–60Google Scholar, ‘Thucydides as reporter and critic’.