This book falls into two parts: Thucydides Historicus and Thucydides Mythicus. In the first, Francis M. Cornford attempts to prove the inadequacy of Thucydides's account of the origins of the Peloponnesian War and develops a very different theory of its causes. In the second part he attempts to answer the question why Thucydides has told us so little about the War that we find accurate, consistent, or relevant.