326 THUCYDIDES
Such was the grievous calamity which now afflicted the Athenians ; within the walls their people were dying, and without, their country was being ravaged. In their troubles they naturally called to mind a verse which the elder men among them declared to have been current long ago : —
" A Dorian war will come and a plague with it."
There was a dispute about the precise expression ; some saying that Hmos, a famine, and not loimos, a plague, was the original word. Nevertheless, as might have been expected, for men's memories reflected their sufferings, the argument in favor of loimos pre- vailed at the time. But if ever in future years an- other Dorian war arises which happens to be accom- panied by a famine, they will probably repeat the verse in the other form. The answer of the oracle to the Lacedaemonians when the God was asked " whether they should go to war or not," and he re- plied, " that if they fought with all their might, they would conquer, and that he himself would take their part," was not forgotten by those who had heard of it, and they quite imagined that they were witnessing the fulfilment of his words. The disease certainly did set in immediately after the invasion of the Pelopon- nesians, and did not spread into Peloponnesus in any degree worth speaking of, while Athens felt its rav- ages most severely, and next to Athens the places which were most populous. Such was the history of the plague. (^Booh 11.^ Chapters 47-54)
