Destruction of Melos

0:00This is the story of the one. As a maintenance tech at a university, he knows ordering from multiple suppliers takes time away from keeping their arena up and running. That's why he counts on Granger. To get everything he needs, from lighting and HVAC parts to plumbing supplies, all in one place, and with fast, dependable delivery, he's stocked and ready for the next tip-off. Call 1-800-Granger, click Granger.com or just up by Granger for the ones who get it done. 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.

1:01Welcome 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?

2:01That 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.

3:02So 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.

4:02Most 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.

5:03But 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.

6:03Joining 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.

7:05More 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.

8:05You 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.

9:06Well, 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. McKinley, it's time to talk about Factor. I love Factor. And why is that? Well, it gives you fast, convenient, delicious meals when I need them, which is important, considering I'm a busy parent. The two things I love about Factor is that it's fast and tasty. Normally, you can't get both from this type of meal. It's one or the other, but not with Factor, you get both. I love their huge selection with 100 rotating weekly meals. I recently got the queso poblano chicken and the smoky barbecue chicken, and they were both fantastic.

10:08That is so awesome. Factor brings quality food to you. It's always fresh and always tasty. So, check out Factor. I use it. My family uses it. I know you'll love it. And you know what, Dad? We got a great offer for our listeners. That's right. Head to FactorMeals.com, slash dispatches pod 50 off and use code dispatches pod 50 off to get 50% off and free breakfast for a year. Eat like a pro this month with Factor. New subscribers only varies by plan. One free breakfast item per box for one year, while subscription is active. 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,

11:09but 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...

12:10But 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,

13:10is 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.

14:10End 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

15:11was 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.

16:11In 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.

17:11The 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.

18:12I 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.