But to be clear, the war was not about Athens trying to get Sparta to embrace democratic reform. Wars rarely are. It was about resources and power. 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.