The Melian Dialogue

The Peloponnesian War took place between the years 431-404 BCE and was a watershed event in the history of ancient Greece. It was, at its core, a conflict for the hegemony, or leadership, of the Greek world between Athens and the Delian League on one hand, and Sparta and the Peloponnesian League on the other. The main source used in this guide for the events of the war is Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War, from which “The Melian Dialogue” is taken.

The end of the Persian Wars (499-449 BCE), in which Athens was a major player in the defeat of the Persian empire, saw a steady and exponential growth in the power of the Athenian city-state. Having organized the Delian League (so named because its treasury was located on the island of Delos) for mutual defense against the Persians, Athens used the funds to greatly expand its navy and force more of the Greek lands formerly under Persian control into the Delian alliance. As the leader, or hegemon, of the alliance, Athens increasingly used common resources to enrich itself, leading to growing resentment from its former allies. By the time the Peloponnesian War began, the Delian League had transformed into an Athenian empire.

Sparta, another major actor in the defeat of the Persians, was the preeminent city-state in the southern Greek peninsula known as the Peloponnese. Sparta, long-famed for its battle prowess, led the other major alliance of the Greek world, the Peloponnesian League, which largely coalesced in response to the rising power of Athens. While Athens’s power largely depended on its navy and control of the Greek islands, Sparta was chiefly a land power and relied on its allies for ships.

Historians divide the Peloponnesian War into three phases. In the first phase, Sparta laid siege to Athens. An outbreak of plague killed up to two-thirds of the people in the besieged city, including its leader, Pericles (495-429 BCE). Nevertheless, Athens achieved a victory in the Peloponnese that undermined the image of Spartan dominance, while Sparta deprived Athens of Amphipolis, a critical source of silver. The loss of Amphipolis led to the exile of Thucydides from Athens, a circumstance that allowed him to gain a wider perspective on the war’s events.

The second phase of the war comprised many minor contests throughout the Greek region, but also the largest land battle of the entire conflict, the Battle of Mantinea (418 BCE), in which the Spartans proved victorious. It was in this stage of the war that Athens visited the island of Melos and set its demands (416 BCE). This period ended in dramatic fashion when Athens suffered a crippling naval defeat while attempting to conquer the Spartan-allied city of Syracuse, on the island of Sicily.

The final phase of the war, lasting from 413-404 BCE, saw Athens continue to fight despite many disadvantages, among which were the disaster at Syracuse, loss of territory in the countryside around Athens, rebellions among subject states, and Sparta’s freeing of the enslaved laborers who worked the Athenian silver mines. In the end, Persia supplied financial backing for a massive Spartan navy, which the Spartan general Lysander led to final victory against the Athenians in 404 BCE. In recognition of the critical role Athens had played in the Persian Wars, Sparta chose not to destroy the city. Instead, they took the city-state into their alliance, installing oligarchs to replace its democratically-elected government.