Destruction of Melos

This is the story of the one.

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Being a democracy,

we often like to think of Athens

as the good guys of Ancient Greece.

And in some ways,

they were,

if such a label can be applied

to a two-and-a-half-thousand-year-old civilization.

But in other ways,

they were absolutely evil,

like when they decided

that their voluntary organization

to help defend Greece,

now had a mandatory membership

and defiance

meant total destruction of your city.

This is the story of the Siege of Milos

and the Million Dialogue.

Welcome to the show, folks.

This is History Dispatches,

which brings you a bit of history

every single weekday.

And today, we're going to

McKinley's Wheelhouse,

Greek and Roman history.

This is one of those classic stories

from the Greek period.

And buddy, you can take this one.

Thank you.

This is a suggestion by Michael.

So thank you for sending it.

I remember we got the email

and Dad, you said,

had you heard of this one?

I said,

absolutely, of course.

This is a classic one.

But it was not on my list,

not something I thought about covering.

So Michael,

you brought up and perfect episode.

Have you heard of this one, Dad?

No.

I may have read about it at some point,

but when you have entities

at last thousand years,

places get burned and destroyed.

And you just kind of like,

what was that one?

That was Milos.

No, that was this silent.

That was that city fair enough.

Well, we are heading to Milos today,

which is a small island in the middle

of the Aegean Sea.

The Aegean Sea is the body of water

right between the Greek peninsula

and modern day Turkey.

You'll hear me call it Asian minor.

That's just because I'm a nerd,

but either way.

Milos was home to the city state

or Paulus of the same name Milos.

Milos was a very small,

calling it a backwater is mean,

but they would have called themselves a backwater.

They were very much state of everyone's way.

They had a very small army,

very small navy.

They didn't really participate

in the wider Greek world,

not out of weird isolationism.

They're on an island

and they are like, just leave us alone.

We don't have anything else for you to bother us with.

Correct.

Humans have lived on Milos for thousands of years.

They were actually famous

for obsidian quarries of all things.

We have tools and dig sites going all the way back to 15,000 BC.

People carving obsidian from quarries there.

So people have known about the island for millennia.

But about 1,000 BC or so,

Dorian Greeks,

which are from the Pelopinesis,

which is kind of the big blob of Greece

and the southern part of the country.

The Spartans, by the way,

are Dorian Greek in ethnicity.

They settled Milos.

There were people there before it,

but kind of the millions that we think of are

from the Pelopinesis Dorian Greeks.

However, Greeks at this time,

when they started settling their colonies

all over the Mediterranean,

it wasn't necessarily a bad thing to leave,

but you were not any longer like,

oh, we're a part of Sparta or something like that.

Or we're a part of Athens or wherever you're from.

You found a brand new city.

They had some cultural ties

and some ethnic ties to Sparta

and the Pelopinesis,

but they weren't Pelopinesians anymore.

But Milos being a small island out of the way,

they kind of had their own culture developed

in a very, very unique across the Aegean Sea.

For example, they had their own coinage standard.

Most Greek cities used the same coinage standard.

They used their own unique one,

which wasn't too much of an issue back then

because everything was made of usual pure silver.

So if you really cared,

you could just melt down the silver

and make your own coins.

But they had their own coinage standard,

which was very rare,

especially for a small city.

They actually had distinct writing system in a script.

They still spoke Greek and wrote in Greek,

but it was a weird fusion of

theban and Cretan Greek.

So it was odd to say the least.

And then one of their bigger exports,

culturally, were these terracotta reliefs.

They were experts in terracotta making.

And we see them all over the Greek world,

these million terracotta sculptures.

All this to say,

Milos was not this tiny, impoverished island.

They didn't have gold reserves,

but they were also far from poor,

anything like that.

And their population was small,

few thousand at most.

They did participate in the Second Persian War,

which we'll get into in a second.

They sent Grantle of two ships to the Battle of Solomonus.

But after that,

they kind of went back to there,

staying out of everyone's way.

That Second Persian War

is where the origin of our story starts.

The Persians invaded first and for 90, then in 480.

This was after the Athenians

led an expedition to free some cities in Asia Minor.

There were numerous Greek cities

along the coast of Asia Minor.

It was known as Ionian Greece.

Athens, the people they were fighting

though were the Persians.

The Persians were enormous and powerful,

so they basically poked a bear.

And this brought the iron of the Persians.

After 480, when the Persians were defeated,

numerous states all over Greece,

but especially in the Aegean Sea

formed what was known as the Deleon League.

Most of these cities were small

because the idea was we have to be in together

if the Persians ever come back.

The exception was Athens,

far and away the biggest state in this organization.

This was a league at first,

not an empire.

Joining was totally voluntary

and you either contributed money or ships.

The goal was to protect Greece

if the Persians ever came in knocking

as well as to free all the Greeks under Persian control,

which basically meant they started launching campaigns

into Ionia and the Greek cities

in the Aegean that had already been conquered.

A noble goal.

Think of it like an ancient NATO or Warsaw pact.

All these cities combined

and were going to free Greece from the Persian Yoke.

However, here's the but.

As the years marched on,

Athenian leadership of the league

became more and more like Athenian control of the league.

It was called the Deleon League

because the treasury was held on the island of Delos,

which was tiny, even smaller than Milos.

The idea was that,

oh, we all pool our money

and no one's going to touch it.

This is for the war treasury and stuff.

But then at one point,

Pericles decided for the protection of the treasure,

we have to move the treasury to Athens instead.

More and more,

the Deleon League turned into Athens' personal piggy bank.

Deleon League funds,

for example,

are what built the Parthenon.

Pericles claimed that by glorifying Athens,

it glorifies the whole league.

I can see you laughing, Dad.

I am laughing, yes.

At this point though,

we're still in like 450 or 40.

It's still kind of okay.

They're still fighting the Persians.

However, the rest of Greece was none too happy

about the continual expansion of the league

and this finally culminated in the Peloponnesian War,

which is more or less

Athenian's Deleon League versus Sparta and the Peloponnesian League.

This war broke out in 431.

This war drags on for about a decade

until the piece of Nickyess in 421.

Now, I've talked about this before,

so forgive me,

but the Athenian state was odd.

It was a full democracy,

meaning that every single citizen

and being a citizen was a fairly unique category.

You had to be adult.

You had to be male.

You had to be from Athens

and you had to be free as well

and there were plenty of slaves in Athens.

So not just anyone could do it.

It was a relatively small percentage

of the population 10 to 20% at most.

But either way,

this still meant tens of thousands plus people

could vote on every single issue

from we need to allocate funds to fix this road to

we wanted to clear war on Sparta.

It was kind of crazy.

From 480 all the way to 431,

Athens was king of the world.

They were on top of everything.

They hardly lost a battle.

They were fantastic.

And in their mind,

they were undefeatable.

Even when the piece of Niki asked

came about in 421,

which is more of a stalemate,

they still saw themselves as

where right and this works

and we're just going to keep on going.

Meanwhile,

the Deleon League was still strong

and any attempts

by the Persians were unsuccessful

for conquering the Aegean.

So this is a lot of words to talk about.

What does this have to do with Milos?

Poor, tiny, insignificant Milos.

Well,

while Milos was originally settled

by Peloponnesians

and when the Peloponnesian War broke out,

much of the side shifting was on ethnic lines.

Milos did not take part at all.

They stayed completely neutral.

They didn't join the Deleon League

despite being in Deleon League territory

or Peloponnesian League being related to them.

They said,

don't, we're staying out.

That was at least until 416 BC

when the Athenian military landed,

held up a spear and said,

join or die.

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When Athens landed on me lost in 416,

they were still technically at peace with Sparta,

as well as the rest of the Peloponnesian League,

and the infamous Sicilian expedition

where they decided to try and conquer Sicily.

Again, the Athenians were kind of losing their minds at this point.

We have a whole episode on that.

If you want to check it out,

we'll still a year away.

So this was squarely in the piece of Nickyass.

At this point, Athens is sort of getting drunk on power,

but they also saw themselves as

we must spread democracy.

We can't have all the garks.

We must spread democracy.

One thing to remember, though,

is that with the Deleon League,

by far most of them were democracies,

I don't know if all of them were,

but the majority of them were democracies

or became democracies.

At this point,

despite being basically Athens' empire,

they still hadn't broken their mission statement,

at least technically.

This whole time, they were still defending

Deleon League states,

if not from Persia, than at least from Sparta.

It was still voluntary.

Every member who joined was willing.

Some more willing than others.

And at no time,

had Athens landed a force to crush and say,

join, like the Persians had done

to many Greek city states over the past couple hundred years.

So no matter what,

Athens could always argue that this was for the good of Greece,

even if it's building the Parthenon,

really that good for...

But either way, you could at least twist the argument.

You know what I mean?

Paracles was technically right,

at least until they landed on Milos in 416.

Thucydides, in his history of the Peloponnesian War,

wrote what is now known as the Millian Dialogue.

It's totally fictional,

but it kind of gets the gist of what was going on,

and it's a fictionalized account of the discussion

that ensued between the Athenian and the Millian leadership.

Athens landed with 30 plus ships

and around 3,000 troops.

The Athenians began to make military encampments

around the island,

settling in for siege.

Then, they offered the Millians a choice.

Join our empire or be destroyed.

You lost answered, more or less, why?

We're a neutral state, and we have no quarrel with you.

We don't want to join, why would you want us to join?

To which Athens answered in the Dialogues

now most famous line,

quote,

since you know as well as we do,

that right as the world goes,

is only in question between equals and power,

while the strong do what they can

and the weak suffer what they must.

End quote.

This is a line that is often repeated

in political realist theory,

the classic might makes right,

or my favorite,

the weak are meat,

and the strong do eat.

And this was Athens saying,

we're strong,

you're weak,

we're hungry,

and we're going to destroy you.

Keep in mind,

the 3,000 Athenians that had landed

were probably the same size as the amount of people

that lived on me loss.

The Millians,

to their credit though,

they didn't back down,

they refused to.

They said,

we wish to remain independent,

and the Spartans,

there are relatives,

they'll come and save us.

And the Athenians responded,

yeah, not a chance.

The Athenians,

they give the Millians one last chance,

and their response,

my favorite line,

from Millians' quote.

Our resolution,

Athenians,

is the same as it was at first.

We will not, in a moment,

deprive of freedom,

a city that has been inhabited

these 700 years.

End quote.

They didn't care

that they were going to be destroyed,

they would rather die free,

than suffer under the Athenian yoke.

The Spartans did not come to save them,

and a siege began.

Milloss fought back,

hard,

as hard as they could.

As soon as the siege began,

the Millians rallied forth

and attacked the Athenian granary,

and they stole a bunch of food

for the city,

and they held out for the whole summer.

After winter,

they made another attempt

to break the siege,

but the Athenians repulsed them,

and the Athenians responded

by sending in reinforcements

from Athens proper,

and finally made a direct assault,

washing through the city,

completely conquering it.

For the Mealian Insulence,

the Athenians responded,

and this is according to Thucydides,

they executed every single man

of military age,

and enslaved every single woman

in child,

depopulating the island

in its entirety.

This was not something

you did, at least,

to this extent.

Completely erasing a city state

was almost unheard of.

The Athenians then sent settlers

of their own

to repopulate the island,

not even as a colony,

but as just a small extension

of Athens.

And the reason we know

that this was a complete

I would argue genocide

of the Mealian people

is because all of the

unique Mealian things

that we saw for the past 700 years,

terracotta,

their script,

their coinage,

gone,

completely disappeared

from the historical record

after 416.

It was an utter genocide

of the people.

After this,

Athens continued

to believe themselves

invincible.

We were able to destroy

a whole city,

we'll just keep doing it,

and they invaded

Sicily a year later,

and an utter catastrophe.

And any hope

that the destruction

of Mealos would act

as a deterrent

for other city states,

joining was a complete fallacy.

Rebellions started popping

up in record numbers

all across the Deleon League.

The Peloponnesian War

would heat up soon,

and it would eventually end

with Sparta conquering Athens

about a decade after this.

In the end,

the destruction of Mealos

was a complete

and utter waste

of human life,

and an organization

whose purpose

became totally lost,

and the people

who paid the price

for that was an independent state

that just wanted to stay free.

But that is the story

of the Mealian dialogue

and the siege of Mealos.

Oh, that's a sad story.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't remember

this one at all.

Yeah, this was a sad story,

and I think the

even sadder thing,

it was utterly worthless,

completely.

You had someone

who would have been an ally

when it was important,

such as if the Persians came,

but now you just wiped out

a bunch of people

who can no longer help you,

and they can't even

help you financially

or anything.

Nothing.

That is just brutal.

But, McKinley,

it's a fun story,

not fun in this sense,

but it's a good story

from history,

and it's not that unique.

I mean, the Mongols swept in

and would just say,

surrender,

or we'll just wipe you out.

People have been doing this

thousands of years.

Oh, this is not unique.

The kicker with this one, though,

is that we like to think

of the Athenians as the good guys.

Yeah.

To that point,

had kind of, as you said,

held up their end of the bark

and they've been a protector

against the Persians.

And then against the Spartans,

the start of the Peloponnesian War

is a hole in their tail.

But I remember I was sitting

in a Greek history class

when my professor was lecturing,

and even in his voice,

you could tell,

this was the moment

where it ticked over

and the Athenians

were no longer the good guys

from the ancient world.

It's just sad.

Yeah, it happened so.

Alrighty.

We want to say thanks to Michael

for sending in the story.

Thanks to McKinley for telling it.

And I'm just going to leave you

with our tidbit of the day.

And that is,

the nation of Greece

is known for its islands.

There are lots of them.

Between 1200 and 6000,

depending on how you count them.

However, the nation

with the most islands

is Sweden,

which has over 250,000 islands.

Which is a lot of islands

and wow.

I never knew that.

No, me neither.

Well, again,

thanks McKinley for telling the story

of the median dialogue

and the siege of Milos.

Absolutely.

Folks, we want to say thanks

for hanging out with us.

If you have any ideas

like Michael did,

send them to us.

Go to historydispatchers.com.

There's a form there.

Fill it out.

It's send and boom.

We'll get that message.

We love to hear stories

that you guys have for us.

Otherwise,

just want to say thanks very

much for hanging out with us.

And we will see you next time.

But

we'll see you next time.

We'll see you next time.