History of the Peloponnesian War

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

to war openly. Accordingly, having encamped in their territory with the forces just mentioned, the Athenian commanders, Cleomedes son of Lycomedes and Teisias son of Teisimachus, before doing any harm to the land, sent envoys to make proposals to the Melians. These envoys the Melians did not bring before the popular assembly, but bade them tell in the presence of the magistrates and the few[*](Probably the chief governing body, a chamber of oligarchs, to which the magistrates (αἱ ἀρχαί) belonged.) what they had come for. The Athenian envoys accordingly spoke as follows:

“Since our proposals are not to be made before the assembly, your purpose being, as it seems, that the people may not hear from us once for all, in an uninterrupted speech, arguments that are seductive and untested,[*](ie. not questioned or put to the proof.) and so be deceived—for we see that it is with this thought that you bring us before the few—do you who sit here adopt a still safer course. Take up each point, and do not you either make a single speech, but conduct the inquiry by replying at once to any statement of ours that seems to be unsatisfactory. And first state whether our proposal suits you.”

The commissioners of the Melians answered: “The fairness of the proposal, that we shall at our leisure instruct one another, is not open to objection, but these acts of war, which are not in the future, but already here at hand, are manifestly at variance with your suggestion. For we see that you are come to be yourselves judges of what is to be said here, and that the outcome of the discussion will in all likelihood be, if we win the debate by the righteousness of our cause and for that very reason refuse to yield, war for us, whereas if we are persuaded, servitude.”