Picture This by Joseph Heller

Author:Joseph Heller [Heller, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Classics, Literary
ISBN: 9780684868196
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2000-03-23T13:00:00+00:00

22

THE DESTRUCTION OF MELOS took place in that interval of peace that was known as the cold war.

With the death in battle of the brilliant Spartan general Brasidas, who had opposed peace because of the success and the reputation he had derived from war, and the death in the same battle of Cleon, who had opposed peace because he believed that in time of war people would be less likely to notice his evil doings and more likely to believe his slanders of others, it was possible to bring the war to an end.

An endearing feature of Greek wars then was that people advocating them often died in them.

The Peace of Nicias was negotiated to last fifty years.

It lasted seven.

It might have lasted forever had not Alcibiades decided to play a more active role in the affairs of his nation, to the eventual distress of Athens, Syracuse, Sparta, Persia, Melos, Argos, and Socrates.

If not forever, then for seventy years, until Philip marched down the mainland from Macedonia and subdued all cities there and in the Peloponnese.

Alcibiades went into politics because he wanted glory and money. He went in as a warhawk because that’s where the money and the glory are. No one ever captured the imagination of a country by fighting for peace.

In essence the terms of the treaty were simple: Athens and Sparta would recognize each other’s boundaries and respective alliances and contend with each other only in the neutral cities of the third world.

One of these cities was Melos, on a small island not far to the south in the Cretan Sea, about an equal distance from Athens and Sparta.

With Mytilene, you know, a city in rebellion, there was a change of heart by Athens at the eleventh hour. With Melos, which wished only to remain neutral, there was no change of heart. The revolt of Mytilene occurred during war in a year of desperate reverses for Athens. The destruction of Melos took place in a calm atmosphere of peace.

The Athenians arrived in Melos with thirty of their own ships, and six from Chios and two from Lesbos, landing twelve hundred hoplites, three hundred bowmen, and twenty mounted archers of their own, and about fifteen hundred hoplites more from the allies and islanders.

The famed Melian debate was brief. The Athenians displayed at the outset that practical intelligence in realpolitik in which they were foremost in intelligence among all Greeks and which, in the modern world, is the trademark of the worldly professional in international relations. The Athenians, having landed troops, took control of the talks with two irrefutable propositions:

1. The hatred of the Melians was more valuable to Athens than their friendship.

2. It is a law of civilization that the strong dominate the weak.

The dialogue was held on the beach outside the city.

The Melian leaders would not permit the Athenians to talk directly to the people, as though there did not exist in the city a legitimate government.

“All right then,” said the Athenians. “Since our proposals are not

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