In 416 BCE, during the Peloponnesian War, Athens demanded the submission of Melos, a Dorian island that had stayed neutral, and besieged it when the Melians refused. Thucydides frames the episode with the Melian Dialogue, in which the Athenian envoys argue that 'the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must', and then records the outcome in a single sentence: on surrender the Athenians killed every adult man they captured, sold the women and children into slavery, and sent out 500 settlers of their own. The population was not merely subjugated but eliminated as a community and replaced. Melian survivors were restored to the island by the Spartan commander Lysander after Athens's defeat in 405 BCE. The event is treated in the modern literature as one of the clearest ancient cases in which killing and enslavement were the deliberate instrument of policy rather than an accompaniment to conquest, though whether the modern term genocide is appropriate is debated.
Athens besieged the neutral island city of Melos, executed the adult male population, sold the women and children into slavery and planted 500 Athenian colonists on the island
No count survives. The estimate is reconstructed backwards from Thucydides, who reports that Athens killed the adult males and enslaved the women and children, then sent 500 colonists to occupy the island. Modern estimates of the Melian citizen body run to roughly 500-1,000 adult males, implying a total free population of about 2,500-4,000, plus an unknown number of slaves.
Thucydides records that all captured adult males were executed but gives no number. The range reflects modern reconstructions from the island's population and its recorded tribute, with the upper end around 1,500 used in general reference works and the lower end reflecting the fact that an unknown number escaped or were not captured.
Thucydides, a contemporary Athenian historian, records the execution of the captured adult male population and the enslavement of the women and children.
Greece