Michael’s Reviews > History of the Peloponnesian War: Books 1-2 > Status Update

Ἥξει Δωριαξὸς πόλεμος καὶ λοιμὸς ἅμ’ αὐτῷ.
A Dorian war shall come and pestilence with it.

This prophecy, passed down by their elders, was recalled by the Athenians in 430 B.C.E. as they were suffering a plague. In attempting to recall this oral prophecy, there was controversy over whether the word was truly λοιμός ‘pestilence‘ or λιμός ‘famine’. The former won the day.

How Acarnania got its name.

Thucydides observes that the mouths of the river Achelous kept making fresh deposits of silt such that the islands nearby had become part of the mainland already, and he foresees the rest of the islands not yet connected becoming the same. I think this fact is visible on Google Maps: coordinates 38.345293, 21.102225.

After the botched invasion of Piraeus by the Peloponnesians in winter 330 B.C.E. (they sailed to Salamis instead and caused such a confusion that the Athenians sailed out to meet them), the Athenians extended the Piraeus' sea-wall to narrow the passage into the port. This was closed by a chain, as the Golden Horn was in Constantinople.

The lone Athenian ship, pursued by one of a host of Peloponnesian ships, rounded an anchored boat in the open sea and hit the pursuer midships. The Peloponnesians were singing the paean beforehand as if they had already won, and as if to punish their hubris, this feat occurred and sent consternation through the other Peloponessian vessels.

Example of distinction between ἐπί and παρά: παρὰ τὴν ἐαυτῶν γῆν ‘along their shore’, ἐπὶ τὴν ἐαυτῶν γῆν ‘against their shore’ (‘i.e. with it at their backs’ (footnote 4).

‘Ὑμεῖς δὲ πόλιν μὲν καὶ οἰκίας ἡμῖν παράδοτε τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις καὶ γῆς ὅρους ἀποδείξατε …’

The Lacedaemonians would have to have the boundaries of land shown to them. There was no common knowledge of the termination of others’ lands.

[8] καὶ ουκ ἤγετο μᾶλλον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ ἢ αὐτὸς ἦγε
[9] ἐγίγνετό τε λόγῳ μὲν δημοκρατία, ἔργῳ δὲ ὑπὸ τοῦ πρῶτου ἀνδρὸς ἀρχή.

I think Thucydides disparages democracy, seeing its weaknesses clearly demonstrated after Pericles' death, seeing his death as the passing of a great restraint on populism and ochlocracy.

Thucydides snidely remarked that if another war with the Dorians (who in this case were the Peloponnesians) came again, and it was accompanied by famine, then λιμός would win the day, since οἱ γὰρ ἄνθρωποι πρὸς ἃ ἔπασχον τὴν μνήμην ἐποιοῦντο (‘for people recollected things according to what they suffered’).

The loss of limb and eyesight resulting from the plague was ‘evidently as the result of gangrene, due to stoppage of circulation. This after-effect of typhus was of common occurrence in the outbreak in the Balkans in 1915.’