And the Athenians were hardly saintly in all of this, as evidenced by the famous Melian Dialogue. Let's go to the Thought Bubble. So in one of the most famous passages of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians sailed to the island of Melos, a Spartan colony, and demanded that the Melians submit to Athenian rule. The Melians pointed out that they'd never actually fought with the Spartans and were like, listen, if it's all the same to you, we'd like to go Switzerland on this one. Except, of course, they didn't say that because there was no Switzerland, to which the Athenians responded, and here I am quoting directly, the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Needless to say, this is not a terribly democratic or enlightened position to take. This statement, in fact, is sometimes seen as the first explicit endorsement of the so-called theory of realism in international relations.