Peloponnesian War · War Crimes & Atrocities
The Peloponnesian War is a chronicle of the progressive collapse of the moral norms that had regulated Greek warfare. The Persian Wars generation had developed shared codes — the exchange of prisoners, the return of the dead, the immunity of temples and neutral states. The Peloponnesian War systematically violated every one of these: Plataea's garrison was executed on a legal pretext, Melos was annihilated and enslaved, Mycalessus was massacred by Thracian mercenaries, and the Athenian prisoners in the Syracuse quarries were left to die of exposure. Thucydides explicitly traced this moral collapse — what he called 'stasis,' the war of all against all within cities — as the Peloponnesian War's most devastating legacy.
225+
deaths
Victims: 200 Plataeans and 25 Athenians
Victims: All adult male citizens of Melos(Thucydides says the adult men were killed and the women and children enslaved, but gives no numerical death toll.)
Victims: Entire population of Mycalessus, including schoolchildren(Thucydides describes indiscriminate killing, including the children in a school, but supplies no numerical death toll.)
Victims: Athenian and allied prisoners from the Sicilian Expedition(Thucydides describes severe mortality among the prisoners but does not provide an exact death toll; roughly 7,000 is commonly given for those initially confined, not those killed.)
1,000+
deaths
Victims: Citizens of Mytilene, Lesbos (threatened but not carried out)(Approximately 1,000 ringleaders executed after the reversal; the general massacre was averted)