The Athenians counter that, if they accept the Melians ' neutrality and independence, they would look weak: people would think they spared Melos because they were not strong enough to conquer it.

The Athenians counter that the Greek states on the mainland are unlikely to act this way.

" The Athenians counter that the debate is not about honour but about self-preservation.

The Athenians counter that only the strong have a right to indulge in hope ; the weak Melians are hopelessly outnumbered.

*** Sparta accepts Lesbos as an ally and prepares to counter the Athenians.

Plutarch mentions that the Athenians saw the phantom of King Theseus, the mythical hero of Athens, leading the army in full battle gear in the charge against the Persians, and indeed he was depicted in the mural of the Stoa Poikile fighting for the Athenians, along with the twelve Olympian gods and other heroes.

The Unknown god was not so much a specific deity, but a placeholder, for whatever god or gods actually existed but whose name and nature were not revealed to the Athenians or the Hellenized world at large.

The origins of this sport is claimed to be derived from the Athenians when Themistocles, marching his army against the Persians, chanced upon two cocks fighting and charged his army saying “ Behold, these do not fight for their household gods, for the monuments of their ancestors, for glory, for liberty or the safety of their children, but only because one will not give way to the other .” Inspired, his army defeated the Persians and after ordained by law, cockfighting was annually practiced as " an institution partly religious and partly political at Athens, and continued there for the purpose of improving the seeds of valour in the minds of the Athenian youth ".

Two Athenians, Theseus and Pirithous, thought that since they were both sons of gods, both should have divine wives ; they thus pledged to help each other abduct two daughters of Zeus.

Pausanias tells us that he forbade the sacrificing of any living creatures to the gods, as well as any sort of other offering, only allowing cakes formed into the shape of an ox with horns, called by the Athenians Pelanous, which signifies an ox.

:" Just as in all other respects the Athenians continue to be hospitable to things foreign, so also in their worship of the gods ; for they welcomed so many of the foreign rites that they were ridiculed for it by comic writers ; and among these were the Thracian and Phrygian rites.

He is happy to discuss their plight with them and meanwhile one of them has a brilliant idea — the birds, he says, should stop flying about like idiots and instead should build themselves a great city in the sky, since this would not only allow them to lord it over men, it would also enable them to blockade the Olympian gods in the same way that the Athenians had recently starved the island of Melos into submission.

The cleverest of the two Athenians, the author of the brilliant idea, then delivers a formal speech, advising the birds that they were the original gods and urging them to regain their lost powers and privileges from the johnny-come-lately Olympians.

The birds are completely won over and urge the Athenians to lead them in their war against the usurping gods.

Political allegory featured prominently in nineteenth century interpretations: Cloudcuckooland could be identified with the Sicilian Expedition as an over-ambitious scheme, Athenians could then be identified with the birds, and their enemies with the Olympian gods.

Despite the absence of actions of the gods, religion and piety play critical roles in the actions of the Spartans, and to a lesser degree, the Athenians.

Even more suspicious from the viewpoint of many Athenians, Socrates expresses skeptical views on the main stories about the Greek gods, which the two men briefly discuss before plunging into the main argument.

When the Athenians asked the people of Andros to give them money for their protection, because they had come with the aid of two gods, Peitho ( Persuation ) and Ananke, they replied that the power of Athens could never be stronger than the goddess Penia ( Poverty ) who expressed their inability to pay.

When the citizents of Melos invoked the gods against the unjust oppression of the Athenians, the Athenians answered that was a " necessary law of nature " for them to rule wherever they could.

The Athenians pointed to the plague as evidence that the gods favoured Sparta and this was supported by an oracle that said that Apollo himself ( the god of disease and medicine ) would fight for Sparta if they fought with all their might.

Of all the causes of defection, that connected with arrears of tribute and vessels, and with failure of service, was the chief ; for the Athenians were very severe and exacting, and made themselves offensive by applying the screw of necessity to men who were not used to and in fact not disposed for any continuous labor.

The Athenians also arranged for the other members of the league to pay its share of the expense in money instead of in ships and men, and for this the subject city-states had themselves to blame, their wish to get out of giving service making most leave their homes.

In fact, according to Isocrates, the Athenians and their allies lost some 20, 000 men in the expedition.

He offered the Athenians peace, however, under the condition that Athens would send seven young men and seven young women every nine years to Crete to be fed to the Minotaur, a vicious monster.

Indeed, based on their previous experience of the Greeks, the Persians might be excused for this ; Herodotus tells us that the Athenians at Marathon were " first to endure looking at Median dress and men wearing it, for up until then just hearing the name of the Medes caused the Hellenes to panic ".

The Athenians had honed their style of fighting in combat with other phalanxes, wooden shields smashing against wooden shields, iron spear tips clattering against breastplates of bronze ... in those first terrible seconds of collision, there was nothing but a pulverizing crash of metal into flesh and bone ; then the rolling of the Athenian tide over men wearing, at most, quilted jerkins for protection, and armed, perhaps, with nothing more than bows or slings.

The Athenians lost 192 men and the Plataeans 11.

Further, the elite Athenians who suffered ostracism were rich or noble men who had connections or xenoi in the wider Greek world and who, unlike genuine exiles, were able to access their income in Attica from abroad.

* September 12 – The Battle of Marathon takes place as a Persian army of more than 20, 000 men is advised by Hippias to land in the Bay of Marathon, where they meet the Athenians supported by the Plataeans.

The Athenians are routed, with all of their generals and 430 other men killed.

Its inhabitants are treated with great cruelty by the Athenians, with all the men capable of bearing arms being killed, while the women and children are made slaves.

The Athenians and their allies, with 14, 000 men under the command of Myronides, meet the Spartans at Battle of Tanagra.

His ability to compose tastefully and poignantly on military themes put him in great demand among Greek states after their defeat of the second Persian invasion, when he is known to have composed epitaphs for Athenians, Spartans and Corinthians, a commemorative song for Leonidas and his men, a dedicatory epigram for Pausanias, and poems on the battles of Artemisium, Salamis, and Plataea.

The Athenians asked for terms, and were required to sacrifice seven young men and seven maidens every seven or nine years to the Minotaur.

In July 404 BC, they summoned Lysander back to Athens, where he supervised the change of government ; an oligarchic politician, Dracontides, proposed in the council to place the government in the hands of thirty chosen men ; Theramenes supported this motion, and, with Lysander threatening to punish the Athenians for failing to dismantle the walls quickly enough unless they assented, it passed the assembly.

The generation of Athenians responsible for that victory were men educated in the Superior way ( line 986 ).

In the aftermath, as was common in ancient history with resisted sieges, the Athenians executed all the adult men they caught, and sold the women and children into slavery.

Edonian and Chalcidian cavalry and light infantry pursued the fleeing Athenians, killing 600 men, including Cleon.

Herodotus records that 6, 400 Persian bodies were counted on the battlefield ; the Athenians lost only 192 men ,, though these numbers are highly doubtful.

The Athenian troops landed outside Syracuse, and lined up eight men deep with the Argives and Mantineans on the right, the rest of the allies on the left, and the Athenians themselves in the centre.

The Syracusans were deployed sixteen men deep, in order to offset the advantage of the Athenians in experience.

The Syracusan cavalry prevented the Athenians from chasing them, thereby averting a catastrophe for the Syracusans, who lost about 260 men, and the Athenians about 50.