A neutral island's plea for mercy got a one-line answer: might makes right

In 416 BCE, Athens demanded that the neutral island of Melos submit and pay tribute during the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides recorded the negotiation as a stark debate over justice versus power, with the Athenians declaring that 'the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.' Melos refused, was besieged, and its men were killed and its women and children enslaved — a case still cited today as the founding text of political realism.

— Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War — Siege of Melos, 416 BCE