ABSTRACT
The Melian Dialogue suggested to an ancient critic the parallel between the imperial people and the Eastern monarch. Thucydides, by perpetual coincidences of thought and phrase, and by the turn and colour of all this part of his narrative, has with evident design emphasized this parallel, and so turned against Athens the tremendous moral which his countrymen delighted to read in the Persians of Aeschylus and the History of Herodotus. Looking back upon the development of the Empire in the previous fifty years, the defection of Athens from the old, glorious ideal of the union of Hellas against the outer darkness of barbarism. It then focuses on Nikias reiterate the warnings addressed in vain by Artabanus to the infatuate monarch, and Alcibiades echo the eager tones of Mardonius, who, 'ever desirous of some new enterprise and wishing himself to be regent of Hellas, persuaded Xerxes'.
