Melian Dialogue - Analysis

Analysis

The Melian Dialogue opened up many arguments about the morality of destroying Melos. One of the arguments in the Melian Dialogue is whether or not the destruction of Melos was a humanitarian act. The destruction of Melos was not humanitarian, but the Athenians' attempts to procure the surrender of Melos before destroying it was at the least less inhumane than an immediate debellation would have been. A.B. Bosworth represents both points of view. He argues that the Melian Dialogue was not humanitarian at all because of the brutality the Athenians used against Melos. However, he also argues that it could be humanitarian because, "they could only confront them with the reality of their position in the bluntest terms. Harsh their language undoubtedly is, but it has a humanitarian end, to convince the Melian oligarchs of the need to capitulate and save themselves and the commons the horrors of a siege." The Melians were put in quite the predicament: to save themselves and surrender or have their nation completely destroyed for the sake of independence.

As for Thucydides' point of view, it would seem that he may have had a bias in favour of the Melians because of his exile from Athens. W. Liebeschuetz argues that the Athenians were "wrong and deluded" because of their lack of morality in Melos' destruction but also that "the Athenians were also perfectly right that the Melians' own interest required that they should yield to the Athenians since they had not the strength to resist successfully." However, D.M. Lewis declares that, "Thucydides, with his strong feeling for the power and glory of Athens, may have seen this differently and regarded the Melians' heroics as foolish and unrealistic; and the fact that they had been offered a relatively painless alternative might affect his view of the massacre." Lewis also questioned how much of a reaction Thucydides wanted to get from his readers, based on the cruelty the Athenians showed the Melians. This was because "judgments about the Athenian empire is certainly in large part due to the attention that Thucydides' Dialogue has focused on it, but the feeling he displays elsewhere about that empire makes it questionable if he intended to produce the revulsion which most readers of the Dialogue feel." The Melian Dialogue garners a lot more attention in The History of the Peloponnesian War because of Athens' hostility than Thucydides might have intended.

Though they were faced with overwhelming odds, the Melians believed that the Spartans, who were their kin, would come to their aid against Athens. Moreover, they did not want to be regarded as cowards for surrendering so easily and submitting themselves to dominance by Athens.

The dialogue does not reflect the Melians' making any appeal to the potential counter-argument that Athens' allowing the Melians to remain neutral, simply continuing its empire-building around them while they did as they pleased, would show strength rather than weakness by demonstrating that Athens was so powerful that it and its empire would not suffer and had nothing to fear even if the Melians refused to cooperate.