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Updated: June 2, 2025
Melians. But do you consider that there is no security in the policy which we indicate? For here again if you debar us from talking about justice and invite us to obey your interest, we also must explain ours, and try to persuade you, if the two happen to coincide. How can you avoid making enemies of all existing neutrals who shall look at case from it that one day or another you will attack them?
Melians. As we think, at any rate, it is expedient we speak as we are obliged, since you enjoin us to let right alone and talk only of interest that you should not destroy what is our common protection, the privilege of being allowed in danger to invoke what is fair and right, and even to profit by arguments not strictly valid if they can be got to pass current.
They were brought back relentlessly to the grim alternative-submission, or extermination. At length this strange controversy came to an end, and after one final hint, of fearful significance, the Athenian envoys withdrew, leaving the Melians to consider their answer.
Meanwhile the Melians attacked by night and took the part of the Athenian lines over against the market, and killed some of the men, and brought in corn and all else that they could find useful to them, and so returned and kept quiet, while the Athenians took measures to keep better guard in future. Summer was now over.
In fact, in an excellent review of his work I have seen him criticised for being too impartial. On the other hand, Grote thinks that he has found Thucydides in error, in the long dialogue between the Athenian representatives and the Melians.
Not if you are well advised, the contest not being an equal one, with honour as the prize and shame as the penalty, but a question of self-preservation and of not resisting those who are far stronger than you are. Melians.
Reinforcements afterwards arriving from Athens in consequence, under the command of Philocrates, son of Demeas, the siege was now pressed vigorously; and some treachery taking place inside, the Melians surrendered at discretion to the Athenians, who put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves, and subsequently sent out five hundred colonists and inhabited the place themselves.
On receiving this answer the Athenian commanders at once laid siege to Melos, and the doomed city was soon closely blockaded by sea and land. The Melians made a gallant defence, and twice succeeded in breaking through the lines of the besiegers, and conveying supplies into the town. But presently reinforcements arrived from Athens, and the Melians were confined within their walls.
Delphi was probably the original place of meeting, and was, therefore, in one important sense, the capital of Greece. Originally, this council or congress was composed of deputies from twelve States, or tribes—Thessalians, Bœotians, Dorians, Ionians, Perrhæbians, Magnetes, Locrians, Octæans, Phthiots, Achæans, Melians, and Phocians.
All Greece, however, rejoiced to see the Aeginetans, by Lysander's aid, now again, after a long time, receiving back their cities, and the Melians and Scionaeans restored, while the Athenians were driven out, and delivered up the cities.
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