Melos in 218 B.C.

Melos — Spring 218 BC · The Island of Black Glass.

A volcanic island at the south-west edge of the Cyclades, rich in minerals — sulphur, alum, and above all obsidian, the black volcanic glass that for ages has been quarried here and carried across the Aegean. A Dorian island, whose settlers came of Lacedaemonian (Spartan) stock, Melos long kept apart from the Athenian sea-empire and suffered a famous and terrible fate at Athenian hands generations ago. By 218 BC it is a quiet island of miners and herders set about its great sheltered bay, one of the finest natural harbours in all the islands, while the open seas beyond are watched by the fleets of Egypt, Macedon and Rhodes.

Melos is unlike its sister islands — a drowned volcano whose vast bay, entered through a single narrow mouth, opens into a harbour that could shelter a fleet. Its hills give up what no other island can: sulphur and alum from the hot, sour ground, and the famous obsidian, the black volcanic glass men have quarried and traded out of Melos since before memory. The Melians are Dorians, kin to the Lacedaemonians, and in the great war between Athens and Sparta they tried to keep neutral and were destroyed for it. That wound healed into legend; the city was resettled, and in 218 BC Melos is a modest independent polis of miners, herders and seafarers, far enough south to lie at the margin of the great powers’ quarrels even as their warships pass in the offing.