Granted, however, that for practical purposes a subdivision
of the third volume, or section, of the work was desirable,
the existing divisions are sufficiently justified by the structure of
the narrative and the nature of the subject.5 The story falls
almost spontaneously into the account of the antecedents and
preparations for the great undertaking, as well on the offensive
side as on that of the defence. The scenes of these two parallel
streams of narrative and description are necessarily laid apart, on
the Asiatic and on the European mains, until the invaders and
the invaded are set face to face, by sea and land, at Artemision
and Thermopylai. From that point onward the stories of the PersoHellenic
war might flow in a single channel but for the double
character of the operations, maritime and terrestrial. Thus,
to the account of the preparations ex parte Persarum, which
carries Xerxes and his forces to the threshold of Greece, uninterrupted
by any reference to purely Greek affairs, succeeds
the account of the contemporary preparations of the Greeks to
meet the impending danger, down to the definitive occupation of
their first line of defence. At this point the two stories coalesce
[p. xix]
into the narrative of the struggle for Thermopylai, with the
capture of which post the seventh Book virtually concludes.
Four or five subjects, in the main of continuous character, fill the
eighth Bookthe story of the naval operations off Artemision,
the advance of the Persians through central Greece, including the
attempted sack of Delphi and the actual capture of Athens, the
naval movements culminating in the battle of Salamis and its
immediate sequels on sea and land, the retirement of the King
and his land-forces, and certain proceedings of the winter and
spring antecedent to the second campaign. A minute analysis of
this portion of the work will reveal a more open texture, a more
composite structure, a certain embarrassment on the author's
part in dealing with his materials, an appreciable increase in
digressional and episodic elements, a greater complication than
is observable in the construction of the seventh or of the ninth
Books; but, for all that, the structure of Book 8 is simple in
comparison with Books 5 and 6, or even Book 3. The ninth
Book is the simplest, as it is the shortest, of all the conventional
divisions: it holds but two compartments, the narrative of the
operations of the armies in Europe, culminating at Plataia; the
narrative of the naval operations culminating on the Asian side
at Mykale, with a sort of corollary in each case respectively, the
siege of Thebes, the siege of Sestos. Throughout this whole
volume comprising these three Books the narrative flows on
almost unbroken, except by those changes of scene and time
which the nature of his subject itself or the sources of his knowledge
imposed on or at least suggested to the author. To
emphasize more fully the continuity and coherence of this
narrative, to specify such digressional passages as do occur, to
exhibit the structure and contents of these Books in somewhat
greater detail, there is here subjoined a more detailed Analysis,
which follows the clear divisions and self-advertisements of the
work itself, with explicit references.
