The entry combines three parallel explanations of a phrase ("you will destroy the gods with Melian starvation") found at Aristophanes, Birds 186, the first two closely related to notes in scholia thereto, the third drawn from a paroemiographic source.
[1] Thucydides 5.84.3 lists the Athenian generals as Kleomedes and Teisias; Nikias was among the commanders in an earlier raid on the island (Thuc. 3.91.1f.), whence perhaps the confusion.
[2] Translating the transmitted kata\ pa/ntwn. The Aristophanes scholia have the more intelligible kat' au)tw=n, "against them" (i.e. the Melians). Without the preceding context the referent of au)tw=n was unclear; pa/ntwn will be a mistaken attempt at correction.
[3] The actual status of Melos in relation to the Athenian empire is controversial; cf. Gomme, Andrewes & Dover on Thucydides 5.84.2.
[4] i.e. a "Melian starvation" means an enormous one.
[5] Melos is, rather, an island in the Cyclades. The Suda has confused it with the region of central Greece, just south of Thessaly, named Malis or Melis. Note that the adjective *mhliai=os which opens the headword phrase is unparalleled, but a form with alpha in place of eta (*maliai=os), also unparalleled, occurs in the manuscript of ps.-Skylax, Periplous, section 62, dealing with that region of Greece.
[6] The Aristophanes scholia have e)pie/sqhsan, "were hard pressed."
[7] The phrase is here quoted in the dative, as it appears in Aristophanes; likewise in Zenobius 4.94 and other paroemiographers.
[8] Thucydides 5.116.2-4.