Make Melos Great Again

Melos is the weakest faction in Total War Rome II: Wrath of Sparta so we are going to make it great again.

The history of Melos goes like this:

Obsidian from Melos was a commodity as early as 15,000 years ago. Natural glass from Melos was transported over long distances and used for razor sharp "stone tools" well before farming began and later: "There is no early farming village in the Near East that doesn't get obsidian". However the mining of obsidian did not lead to the development of permanent habitation or manufacturing on the island. Instead, those in search of obsidian arrived by boat, beaching it in a suitable cove and cutting pieces of the volcanic glass from the quarries.

The position of Melos, between mainland Greece and Crete, and its possession of obsidian, made it an important centre of early Aegean civilisation. Melos lost its arms-making importance when bronze became the preferred material for the manufacture of weapons.

The Greek historian Thucydides wrote in his History of the Peloponnesian War of how, in 416 BC, Athens attacked Melos for refusing to submit tribute and refusing to join Athens' alliance against Sparta. The invasion of Melos occurred during the second phase of the Peloponnesian War (431 to 404 BC). The Melians claimed Spartan descent but had remained neutral throughout this conflict. In 426 BC, Athens had prosecuted a brief perfunctory operation on the island but had withdrawn quickly because they were at the time involved in open conflict with Sparta. In 425 BC Athens claimed suzerainty over Melos and had demanded tribute.

The second attack on Melos occurred five years after Athens and Sparta had signed a peace agreement and some historians like Bosworth believe that Athens' campaign against Melos in 416 BC was motivated by imperial expansion. In the summer of 416 BC the Athenians landed an army of over 3,000 soldiers on the island, led by the generals Cleomedes and Tisias. They sent diplomats to negotiate a surrender, offering to spare the Melians if they joined the Athenian-dominated Delian League and paid tribute to Athens. The Melians rejected the ultimatum. The Athenians laid siege to the city and withdrew most of their troops from the island to fight elsewhere. For months the Melians withstood the siege, but with reinforcements from Athens and the help of traitors within Melos, the Athenians took the city that winter. The Athenians executed all the adult men they caught, and sold the women and children into slavery. They then settled 500 of their own colonists on the island.

The next year, the Athenian tragedian Euripides wrote Trojan Women, which explored the hardships of conquest on women, set in the legendary past of the Trojan War. In 405 BC, with Athens losing the war, the Spartan general Lysander expelled the Athenian settlers from Melos and restored the survivors of the original Spartan colony to the island.