ATHENS DECIDES TO INVADE SICILY

The Melos campaign is the “prelude” to Sicily. The Athenian position articulated at Melos – that no island should be out of the control of the naukratores – argues that Sicily, that greatest of Greek islands, should belong to Athens as well. Thucydides implies the connection between Melos and Sicily with the speed of his narrative. After he notes the end of Melos – “of the Melians they killed as many of the men of military age that they captured; the children and the women they enslaved. They themselves colonized the territory, sending out later five hundred colonists” (5.116) – Thucydides turns immediately to Sicily: “during the same winter the Athenians wanted to sail to Sicily again with a greater force than the one with Laches and Eurymedon and to subdue it if they could…” (6.1.1). As with Melos, Thucydides takes care to note that the Sicilian Expedition does not represent some new aberration in Athenian policy making; Thucydides' reference to the expeditions of Laches in 427 (3.86) and Eurymedon in 425 (4.2) remind readers that the Athenians had long had their eyes on Sicily.

Thucydides' reference to the campaign of Eurymedon and his claim that the Athenians now planned to subjugate the island serve to give a sense of the mood in Athens on the eve of the Sicilian Expedition.