This statement, in fact, is sometimes seen as the first explicit endorsement of the so-called theory of realism in international relations. For realists, interaction between nations or peoples or cultures is all about who has the power. Whoever has it can compel whoever doesn't have it to do pretty much anything. 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.