Talk:Siege of Melos

Coordinate error
The following coordinate fixes are needed for Melos

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 * ✅. Just a latitudinal typo. Thanks for noticing the error. Deor (talk) 09:08, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Tone
"The Athenians counter that this argument is purely emotional and not a rational risk-benefit analysis." Really? Does this business-school jargon accurately represent what Thucydides wrote? Is is it, rather, an example of jarring and off-putting anachronism? Mballen (talk) 07:30, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
 * The person responsible for most of the prose in this article is indefinitely blocked and won't be answering your query, so feel free to make any improvements you deem appropriate. -- Laser brain  (talk)  12:53, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Peloponnesian League
According to the source given, "Peloponnesian League" is a modern name for the alliance between Sparta and its allies. Only after the defeat of Athens did the Spartans copy the Delian (Athenian) league and begin to demand payment of tribute from its allies. The two therefore were not really "similar" as the article asserts. The Spartan side should really be called the "Spartan alliance". Sparta was not an empire and was not seeking to expand its hegemony as Athens was but was profoundly conservative and wished to keep things as they were. This was the key difference between the two rival powers. Note, if it was really payment of tribute that the Melians wished to avoid, and Sparta did not demand payment, they were de facto allies of Sparta, which was how the Athenians viewed them. The Spartans also did come to the aid of Melos in the end after it was too late. There is a lot written on this. And it would be useful if it were covered in the article, or better, in a separate article on Thucydides' speech and its reception, which wikipedia used to have but has unaccountably disappeared. Mballen (talk) 18:51, 25 June 2017 (UTC) Mballen (talk) 18:58, 25 June 2017 (UTC)


 * It was the Spartan perception that Athens was trying to increase its hegemony that was the cause of the war in the first place. The Spartans were not interested in a unified Hellas because (like the Melians in Thucydides' telling) they did not wish to be subordinate, (which involved paying tribute). Mballen (talk) 18:56, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Genocide?
The argument that the Athenians committed genocide is very tendentious. In fact the source cited says that they "may" have committed genocide, because the distinctive Melian culture was wiped out, as evidenced by the fact that their coins became rare. This is a fringe theory because what happened to the Melians was absolutely par for the course for the treatment of defeated populations in warfare at that time and continued under the Romans for many centuries. The Melian culture was obviously different from that of Sparta because they were an island people who engaged in trade (used coins, at that time a relatively new invention), whereas their relatives the conservative Spartans were land bound and self-sufficient and had resisted the use of coinage. Genocide by definition involves the killing not only of the men, but also of women and children. Furthermore, genocide by definition aims for total extermination of all those of a defined ethnic origin (in this case Lacedaemonians) including those who may live elsewhere and have nothing to do with the conflict. I think this should at least be labeled as a fringe theory or preferably removed altogether. Mballen (talk) 16:46, 26 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Very good ideas! MaisonHorta (talk) 16:30, 5 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Do not be afraid to change things! MaisonHorta (talk) 16:36, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Links to itself
The page contains a link to "melian dialogue" but that just points back here.
 * Yes, it takes you straight to the section that deals with the Melian Dialogue. That is intentional. Kurzon (talk) 09:28, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Comments preserved from out-of-process FAC nom of 31 May 2019
This article is about a siege and subsequent massacre which took place during the Peloponnesian War. Kurzon (talk) 10:39, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

OK, I tried addressing some of the issues raised by Caeciliusinhorto in the previous nomination attempt.

"Some but not all citations to books include page numbers. Note 16 is especially bad, citing three books but giving a page number for only one of them." I have added page numbers wherever I could. A difficulty is that I almost exclusively used the ebook versions of the text (easier to search), and some ebook formats do not provide page numbers because the pages are formatted on-the-fly to fit your screen.

"milos.gr is cited, and described in the article as the "official tourism website of Melos": what makes it a reliable source?" Removed.

"The structure of the article is a little weird. For example, the section "Restoration by Sparta" is only three sentences long – if there's only 50 words to say about a particular aspect of an article, it probably doesn't merit an entire section." I thought this was a silly complaint. That section dealt with things that happened a decade later and was not part of the siege, so it deserved its own section. So what if it's just three sentences? But to please everyone, I moved a paragrah from the siege and renamed this section Aftermath.

"There's also some clunky prose: the section summarizing the Melian Dialogue, for instance, has five paragraphs of the format "The Melians argue that[...]. The Athenians counter that[...]." (Interspersed with one paragraph where the Melians instead "believe" for variety!)" I know it's unconventional but I thought it fitting in this special case. Reading the Melian dialogue, it's clearly a classic point-counterpoint debate when you break it down. I thought my style of summary was the most clear and efficient way of communicating the essential ideas, stripped of all the fluffiness.

"Still a very high proportion of citations to ancient sources, which was commented on in the previous review." My use of ancient sources was OK except for one bit where I used an interpretation of the writings of Isocrates. I added a modern source that provides an interpretation.