Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.54.2 · 2.54.2
The old verse is remembered
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ἐν δὲ τῷ κακῷ οἷα εἰκὸς ἀνεμνήσθησαν καὶ τοῦδε τοῦ ἔπους, φάσκοντες οἱ πρεσβύτεροι πάλαι ᾄδεσθαι ‘ἥξει Δωριακὸς πόλεμος καὶ λοιμὸς ἅμ’ αὐτῷ.’
In their trouble, as one would expect, they also recalled this verse, which the older men said had been sung long ago: "A Dorian war will come, and a plague with it."
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The setting
In their misery the older Athenians recall a verse that was sung long ago: a Dorian war would come, and a plague with it.
A note on this passage
The older men are quoted as saying the verse was sung, and the verb is āidesthai, from aeidō, "to sing." Thucydides gives it as a thing handed down by voice, not by a written text, and he attaches it to the old, hoi presbuteroi, so the reader meets it as a memory that the elders pull out when things go wrong. The phrase hoia eikos, "as is natural," belongs to him, and he uses the same adjective eikos again in the next sentence for what is reasonable.
The verse itself sets two nouns side by side, polemos, "war," and loimos, "plague," joined by kai and tied by ham' autōi, "along with it." The war is named Dōriakos, "Dorian," which the Athenians hear as a reference to the Spartans and their allies. The word loimos is the one that sets off the dispute in the next section, because a Greek ear can hear limos, "famine," in it.
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