 So understood, justice defined the basis of equal citizenship and was said to be the requirement for human regimes to be acceptable to the gods. The ideal was that, with justice as a foundation, political life would enable its participants to flourish and to achieve the overarching human end of happiness (eudaimonia), expressing a civic form of virtue and pursuing happiness and success through the competitive forums of the city. Whether justice applied to the city’s relation with other cities was a further and highly contested point, memorably explored in Thucydides’ recounting of the “Melian Dialogue” in 416 BCE, in which emissaries of the Athenians debated the meaning of justice with the leaders of the island-city of Melos, a city they were threatening with death and disaster should they fail to submit to Athenian imperial demands (Thuc. V. 84–114).