History of the Peloponnesian War

The next summer Alcibiades sailed to[*](March, 416 B.C.) Argos with twenty ships and seized such Argives as seemed to be still open to suspicion and to favour the side of the Lacedaemonians, to the number of three hundred men; and these the Athenians deposited in the adjacent islands over which they had sway. The Athenians also made an expedition against the island of Melos[*](cf. 3.91.1; 3.94.2.) with thirty ships of their own, six Chian and two Lesbian, and twelve hundred Athenian hoplites, three hundred bowmen, and twenty mounted archers, and from their allies and the islanders about

fifteen hundred hoplites. Now the Melians are colonists of the Lacedaemonians, and were unwilling to obey the Athenians like the rest of the islanders. At first they remained quiet as neutrals; then when the Athenians tried to force them by ravaging their land, they went

to war openly. Accordingly, having encamped in their territory with the forces just mentioned, the Athenian commanders, Cleomedes son of Lycomedes and Teisias son of Teisimachus, before doing any harm to the land, sent envoys to make proposals to the Melians. These envoys the Melians did not bring before the popular assembly, but bade them tell in the presence of the magistrates and the few[*](Probably the chief governing body, a chamber of oligarchs, to which the magistrates (αἱ ἀρχαί) belonged.) what they had come for. The Athenian envoys accordingly spoke as follows: