Editing Milos (section)

===Siege of 416 BC===
{{See also|Siege of Melos}}
During the [[Peloponnesian War]] (431-404 BC) between Athens and Sparta, the Melians made some small donations to the Spartan war effort,<ref>Geoffrey Ernest Maurice de Ste Croix (1954). "The Character of the Athenian Empire". An essay originally published in ''Historia'' 3, republished in {{harvp|Low|2008|pp=245–246}}: "Epigraphic evidence allows us to go further still: it puts the original Athenian attack on Melos in quite a different light. The inscription found near Sparta [...] records two separate donations by Melos to the Spartan war-funds, one of twenty Aeginetan minae [...] The other figure has perished. The donors are described, it will be noticed, as ''toi Malioi'', 'the Melians'. [...] This shows that the Melian subscription was an official one. [...] there is good reason to think these gifts to Sparta were made in the spring of 427."</ref><ref>The evidence is an inscription (IG V 1, 1) which reads: "The Melians gave to the Lacedaimonians twenty mnas of silver." See {{harvp|Loomis|1992}}, p 13</ref> but remained largely neutral despite sharing the Spartans' [[Dorians|Dorian]] ethnicity. In 426 BC, the Athenians raided the Melian countryside, and the following year demanded tribute,<ref>Brian Sparkes, in {{harvp|Renfrew|Wagstaff|1982|p=49}}</ref> but Melos refused. In the summer of 416 BC, Athens invaded again with 3,400 men, and demanded that Melos ally with them against Sparta, or be destroyed. The Melians rejected this, so the Athenian army laid siege to the city and eventually captured it in the winter.  After the city's fall, the Athenians executed all the adult men,<ref>Thucydides. ''History of the Peloponnesian War'', 116<br/><br/>The key word in the account by Thucydides is ''hebôntas'' (ἡβῶντας), which generally describes people who have passed puberty and in this context refers to the men as Thucydides described a different fate for the women and children. Some translators such as Rex Warner translated this as "men of military age". Another possible translation is "men in their prime". Thucydides made no specific mention of what happened to the elderly males.</ref> and sold the women and children into slavery. They then settled 500 of their own colonists on the island.<ref>Thucydides. ''History of the Peloponnesian War'', 5.84-116</ref>

In 405 BC, with Athens losing the war, the Spartan general [[Lysander]] expelled the Athenian settlers from Melos and repatriated the survivors of the siege.<ref name=Xenophon229>Xenophon. [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0206%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D2%3Asection%3D9 ''Hellenica'', 2.2.9]: "Meantime Lysander, upon reaching Aegina, restored the state to the Aeginetans, gathering together as many of them as he could, and he did the same thing for the Melians also and for all the others who had been deprived of their native states."</ref><ref name=Plutarch144>Plutarch. [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0048%3Achapter%3D14%3Asection%3D3 ''Life of Lysander'', 14.3]: "But there were other measures of Lysander upon which all the Greeks looked with pleasure, when, for instance, the Aeginetans, after a long time, received back their own city, and when the Melians and Scionaeans were restored to their homes by him, after the Athenians had been driven out and had delivered back the cities."</ref> Sparta annexed Melos, which would mean that like other liberated islands, it received a military governor (a ''[[harmost]]'').<ref>Brian Sparkes, in {{harvp|Renfrew|Wagstaff|1982|p=49-50}}: "Melos thus passed from Athenian to Spartan control, and the Melians who returned found a government of ten established, made effective by the presence of a Spartan garrison and of a ''harmost'' or military commander."</ref> The cultural distinctiveness of Melos faded away as it was absorbed into mainstream Greek culture.<ref name=Sparkes1982>Brian Sparkes, in {{harvp|Renfrew|Wagstaff|1982}}</ref> Their coinage switched to the Rhodian standard<ref>Brian Sparkes, in {{harvp|Renfrew|Wagstaff|1982}}, p 231</ref> ([[tetradrachm]]s weighing 15.3 g<ref>{{cite web|url=http://rjohara.net/coins/history/#weights|title=History, Metals, and Weight Standards (Ancient Coins of Miletos)|first=Robert James (1959-)|last=O'Hara|website=rjohara.net|access-date=25 March 2019}}</ref>) and ceased bearing the word ΜΑΛΙΟΝ. The production of its [[terracotta]] reliefs also ceased.