So what did the meritocratic and democratic Athenians do when the Melians politely asked not to participate in the fight? They killed all the Melian men and enslaved all the women and children. So yes, Socrates gave us his interrogative method, Sophocles gave us Oedipus, but the legacy of ancient Greece is profoundly ambiguous. All the more so because the final winner of the Peloponnesian War were the dictatorial Spartans. Thanks for the incredible bummer, Thought Bubble. So here's a non-rhetorical question. Did the right side win the Persian Wars?