Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/256

 140 THE PLAGUE [n made no difference. For offences against human law no punishment was to be feared ; no one would live long enough to be called to account. Already a far heavier sentence had been passed and was hanging over a man's head; before that fell, why should he not take a little pleasure ? 5 }• Such was the grievous calamity which now afflicted the Athenians ; v;ithin 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 ,, saving that limos, a famine, and not ) Dispute about an -^ *=>, • • 1 j ] ancient umcle: ivhether loimos, a plague, was the Original word. j linios or loimos was Nevertheless, as might have been ex- i *" """'*'• - pected, for men's memories reflected I their sufferings, the argument in favour oUoimos prevailed at the time. But if ever in future years another Dorian I war arises which happens to be accompanied by a famine, I they will probably repeat the verse in the other form. The answer of the oracle to the Lacedaemonians when the God was asked ' v/hether they should go to war or not,' and he replied 'that if they fought with all tlicir might, they would conquer, and that he himself vi'oulJ take their parf^,' 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 Peloponnesians, and did not spread into Peloponnesus in any degree worth speaking of, while Athens felt its ravages most severely, and next to Athens the places which were most populous. Such was the history of the plague a Cp. i. 118 liu. ""Cp. iii.87