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Topic: Nabis, War Against (Laconian War of 195 BCE)
Location: Stoke Lyn Oxfordshire United Kingdom

Nabis, War Against (Laconian War of 195 BCE)

Years: 195BCE - 195BCE

The War against Nabis, or Laconian War of 195 BC Eis fought between the Greek city-state of Sparta and a coalition composed of Rome, the Achean League, Pergamum, Rhodes, and Macedon.During the Second Macedonian War (200–196 BCE), Macedon had given Sparta control over Argos, an important city on the Aegean coast of Peloponnese.

Sparta's continued occupation of Argos at the end of war is used as a pretext for Rome and its allies to declare war.

The anti-Spartan coalition lays siege to Argos, captures the Spartan naval base at Gythium, and soon invests and besieges Sparta itself.

Eventually, negotiations lead to peace on Rome's terms, under which Argos and the coastal towns of Laconia are separated from Sparta and the Spartans are compelled to pay a war indemnity to Rome over the next eight years.

Argos joins the Achaean League, and the Laconian towns are placed under Achaean protection.As a result of the war, Sparta loses its position as a major power in Greece.

All consequent Spartan attempts to recover the losses fail and Nabis, the last sovereign ruler, is eventually murdered.

Soon after, Sparta is forcibly made a member of its former rival, the Achaean League, ending several centuries of fierce political independence.

"{Readers} take infinitely more pleasure in knowing the variety of incidents that are contained in them, without ever thinking of imitating them, believing the imitation not only difficult, but impossible: as if heaven, the sun, the elements, and men should have changed the order of their motions and power, from what they were anciently"

― Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy (1517)