Milos - Conflict With Athens

Conflict With Athens

The Greek historian Thucydides wrote in his History of the Peloponnesian War of how, in 416 BCE, Athens attacked Melos for refusing to submit tribute and refusing to join Athens' alliance against Sparta.

The invasion of Melos occurred during the second phase of the Peloponnesian War (431 to 404 BCE). The > In 426 BCE, Athens had prosecuted a brief perfunctory operation on the island but had withdrawn quickly because they were at the time involved in open conflict with Sparta. In 425 BCE Athens claimed suzerainty over Melos and had demanded tribute. The second attack on Melos occurred five years after Athens and Sparta had signed a peace agreement and some historians like Bosworth believe that Athens' campaign against Melos in 416 BCE was motivated by imperial expansion.

In the summer of 416 BCE the Athenians landed an army of over 3,000 soldiers on the island, led by the generals Cleomedes and Tisias. They sent diplomats to negotiate a surrender, offering to spare the Melians if they joined the Athenian-dominated Delian League and paid tribute to Athens. The Melians jected the ultimatum. The Athenians laid siege to the city and withdrew most of their troops from the island to fight elsewhere. For months the Melians withstood the siege, but with reinforcements from Athens and the help of traitors within Melos, the Athenians took the city that winter. In the aftermath, as was common in ancient history with resisted sieges, the Athenians executed all the adult men they caught, and sold the women and children into slavery. They then settled 500 of their own colonists on the island.

The next year, the Athenian tragedian Euripides wrote Trojan Women, which explored the hardships of conquest on women, set in the legendary past of the Trojan War.

When Athens was defeated by Sparta at the end of the Peloponnesian War, the Melian survivors, who had been resettled by Sparta, were restored to their homes by the Spartan general Lysander.