History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides, Vol. 1-4. Smith, Charles Foster, translator. London and Cambridge, MA: Heinemann and Harvard University Press, 1919-1923.

And in their distress they recalled, as was natural, the following verse which their older men said had long ago been uttered:

  1. A Dorian war shall come and pestilence with it.
A dispute arose, however, among the people, some contending that the word used in the verse by the ancients was not Xot/os, "pestilence," but At/uos, "famine," and the view prevailed at the time that "pestilence" was the original word; and quite naturally, for men's recollections conformed to their sufferings. But if ever another Dorian war should visit them after the present war and a famine happen to come with it, they would probably, I fancy, recite the verse in that way.

Those, too, who were familiar with it, recalled that other oracle given to the Lacedaemonians, when, in answer to their inquiry whether they should go to war, the god responded that if they "warred with all their might victory would be theirs," adding that he himself would assist them.i Now so far as the oracle is concerned, they surmised that what was then happening was its fulfilment, for the plague broke out immediately after the Peloponnesians had invaded Attica;

and though it did not enter the Peloponnesus to any extent, it devastated Athens most of all, and next to Athens the places which had the densest population. So much for the history of the plague.

The Peloponnesians, after ravaging the plain, advanced into the district called Paralusl as far as Laurium, where are the silver mines of the Athenians. And first they ravaged that part of this district which looked towards the Peloponnesus, and afterwards the part facing Euboea and Andros.

But Pericles, who was general, still held to the same policy as during the earlier invasion, insisting that the Athenians should not take the field against them.