Melos and Athens

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Robert Zaretsky, What Would Thucydides Say?  Ancient history may help us make sense of the current Greek crisis. New York Times, July 1, 2015 (op-ed).
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/0 ... isis-in-greece.html

Note:
(a)
(i) Thucydides
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides
(c 460 – c 400 BC; History of the Peloponnesian War)
(ii) “The History of the Peloponnesian War is a historical account of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), which was fought between the Peloponnesian League (led by Sparta) and the Delian League (led by Athens). It was written by Thucydides, an Athenian historian who also happened to serve as an Athenian general during the war.”  Wikipedia
(iii) Peloponnese
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloponnese

View the map only.

(b) “the powerful city-state of Athens [was] pitted against the small island of Melos. In his magnificent history of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides recreates, or perhaps created, the encounter in 416 BC between the commanders of an Athenian fleet and leaders of the small island polis of Melos. There are sobering parallels between then and now that may offer insight into our current predicament.”

Milos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milos
(or Melos; The island is famous for the statue of Aphrodite (the "Venus de Milo", now in the Louvre); section 1.1 Conflict with Athens)

(c) “During their war against Sparta, the Athenians demanded that Melos join the Delian League. Originally a defensive alliance that Greek city-states had created following the second Persian invasion, the league had become a tool of Athenian imperialism. Member states, unable to secede, were subject to Athenian dictate and forced to pay annual tribute. Their complaints were met with Athens’s reply that the alliance, whether or not the members agreed, was for their own good. The democracy Athens practiced at home, in short, did not extend to the governance of its league.”
(i) Delian League
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delian_League
(478-404 BC; The League's modern name derives from its official meeting place, the island of Delos, where congresses were held in the temple)
(ii) “Delian” is the adjective of Delos the island.

(d) “What historians call the Melian Dialogue is Thucydides’s depiction of the endgame to this policy — what Victor Davis Hanson [1953- ; American historian] has called Athens’s ‘reign of terror.’ The war between Athens and Sparta was already nearly two decades old, yet no end was in sight. With its citizens weary and restless, Athens adopted a brutal political calculus, declaring that those city-states not with them were, quite simply, against them. They threatened a neutral Melos with physical destruction if it refused to join the Delian League.”

You may stop here, because history lesson ends here. Read the op-ed further, and you will find ancient Greece has nothing to do with current situation in Greece.