Can you relate Thucydides Melian Dialogue to the movie 300?
Melos was an ethnically Spartan island that was the scene of a “fight to the death” defense followed by a massacre of the defenders by the Athenians. Melos … “sought to remain neutral during the Peloponnesian War. But in 415 BC the Athenians launched an attack to the island and compelled the Melians to surrender, slew all the men capable of bearing arms, made slaves of the women and children, and introduced 500 Athenian colonists. Thucydides made this event the occasion of one of the most impressive of the “speeches” in his history. Written like the others in more complex and difficult Greek than his pellucid narrative, this passage, known as the Melian Dialogue, is a locus classicus for the contest between raison d’état and ethical action, and is the fulcrum at which the state of Athens in his history abandoned the noble ideals with which it had entered the war and began to pursue simply its own self-interest. Lysander restored the island to its Dorian possessors, but it never recov
