Josiah Ober: Melos's Prospects https://delong.typepad.com/files/ober-melos.pdf: 'Athens inherited, and, under Pericles’ leadership perfected, the Minos paradigm of naval power, colonization, hostility to non-Greek populations, and subjection of weaker states. By the time of the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, most of Athens’ formerly free allies had been reduced to the status of tribute paying subjects. Thucydides is certainly right to suppose that this was coalition-building on a scale unequalled by earlier Greek hegemonies. Based on epigraphic evidence and population estimates, at its height, Athens’ empire encompassed some 300 communities and perhaps two and a half million persons–roughly a third of the total Greek-speaking population. But Thucydides had shown his reader that Athens followed a well-trodden path, and that the path was predicated on bargains based on mutual advantage...
#noted #2020-02-29
