History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides, Vol. 1-4. Smith, Charles Foster, translator. London and Cambridge, MA: Heinemann and Harvard University Press, 1919-1923.

fifteen hundred hoplites. Now the Melians are colonists of the Lacedaemonians, and were unwilling to obey the Athenians like the rest of the islanders. At first they remained quiet as neutrals; then when the Athenians tried to force them by ravaging their land, they went