During the summer and winter of that year [416 B.C.] there occurred an event of very small military importance and no direct political consequences, to which nevertheless Thucydides devotes twenty-six continuous chapters[.] The event is the siege and capture by the Athenians of a little island called Melos, the massacre of all its adult men and the enslavement of the women and children. The island had no military power. It had little commerce and lived on its own poor agriculture. Its population was not large: when it was depopulated five hundred colonists were enough to people it again. Why then this large place in Thucydides’ brief and severe narrative? Only, I think, because of the moral issue involved and the naked clarity of the crime.

[...] In cool and measured language the Athenian envoys explain to the Melian Senate—for the populace is carefully excluded—that it suits their purpose that Melos should become subject to their empire. They will not pretend—being sensible men and talking to sensible men—that the Melians have done them any wrong or that they have any lawful claim to Melos, but they do not wish any islands to remain independent: it is a bad example to the others. The power of Athens is practically irresistible: Melos is free to submit or to be destroyed. The Melians, in language carefully controlled but vibrating with suppressed bitterness, answer as best they can. Is it quite safe for Athens to break all laws of right? Empires are mortal; and the vengeance of mankind upon such a tyranny as this…? "We take the risk of that," answer the Athenians; "the immediate question is whether you prefer to live or die." The Melians plead to remain neutral; the plea is, of course, refused. At any rate they will not submit. They know Athens is vastly stronger in men and ships and military skill; still the gods may help the innocent ("That risk causes us no uneasiness," say the envoys: "we are quite as pious as you"); the Lacedaemonians are bound by every tie of honour and kinship to intervene ("We shall of course see that they do not"); in any case we choose to fight and hope rather than to accept slavery. "A very regrettable misjudgment," say the Athenians; and the war proceeds to its hideous end.

from Gilbert Murray, Euripides and His Age

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