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.