Indicting the Athenians

Jesse James

Jesse James recently published Indicting the Athenians in the Melian Dialogue, an essay in the Journal of Hellenic Studies by Cambridge University Press.

“It is widely agreed that Thucydides’ Melian dialogue presents the Athenian invasion of Melos, and the Athenian justification, in a negative light. Attention tends to focus on the immorality of ‘the rule of the stronger’ that the Athenians present in the dialogue. This essay argues that another feature of the dialogue triggering negative judgments of the Athenians is their criticism of the Melians’ resistance: it is voiced by the Athenians themselves and therefore provokes in readers a ‘speaker-relative’ normative judgment of the Athenians.”