History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides. The history of the Peloponnesian War, Volume 1-2. Dale, Henry, translator. London: Heinemann and Henry G. Bohn, 1851-1852.

Such was the calamity which the Athenians had met with, and by which they were afflicted, their men dying within the city, and their land being wasted without.

In their misery they remembered this verse amongst other things, as was natural they should; the old men saying that it had been uttered long ago;

  1. A Dorian war shall come, and plague faith it.

Now there was a dispute amongst them, [and some asserted,] that it was not

a plague
[loimos] that had been mentioned in the verse by the men of former times, but
a famine,
[limos]: the opinion, however, at the present time naturally prevailed that
a plague
had been mentioned: for men adapted their recollections to what they were suffering. But, I suppose, in case of another Dorian war ever befalling them after this, and a famine happening to exist, in all probability they will recite the verse accordingly.

Those who were acquainted with it recollected also the oracle given to the Lacedaemonians, when on their inquiring of the god whether they should go to war, he answered,

that if they carried it on with all their might, they would gain the victory;

and that he would himself take part with them in it.
With regard to the oracle then, they supposed that what was happening answered to it. For the disease had begun immediately after the Lacedaemonians had made their incursion; and it did not go into the Peloponnese, worth even speaking of, but ravaged Athens most of all, and next to it the most populous of the other towns. Such were the circumstances that occurred in connexion with the plague.