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Updated: May 18, 2025
XIII. All these exploits of Philopœmen are without doubt glorious to him; but he was much blamed for going a second time to Crete at the request of the people of Gortyna, to act as their general, leaving his own country to be attacked by Nabis, because he avoided the war at home to gather unseasonable laurels abroad.
With ever-increasing hardihood Nabis leaned on the support of vagabonds and itinerant mercenaries, to whom he assigned not only the houses and lands, but also the wives and children, of the citizens; and he assiduously maintained connections, and even entered into an association for the joint prosecution of piracy, with the great refuge of mercenaries and pirates, the island of Crete, where he possessed some townships.
Nabis indeed accepted Argos from Philip, but he betrayed the traitor and remained in alliance with Flamininus, who, in his perplexity at being now allied with two powers that were at war with each other, had in the meantime arranged an armistice of four months between the Spartans and Achaeans. Vain Attempts to Arrange a Peace
On the other hand Nabis had to cede his foreign possessions, Argos, Messene, the Cretan cities, and the whole coast besides; to bind himself neither to conclude foreign alliances, nor to wage war, nor to keep any other vessels than two open boats; and lastly to disgorge all his plunder, to give to the Romans hostages, and to pay to them a war-contribution.
When Nabis and the Lacedaemonians by land, and the Roman fleet by sea, shall press us, whence must I implore the support due from the king's alliance, whence the succours of the Macedonians? Shall we ourselves, with our own arms, defend, against the Roman forces, the cities that will be attacked? Truly, in the former war, we defended Dymae excellently well!
Nabis, being both elated by this adventure, and entertaining a confident hope that he had not now any danger to apprehend from the sea, resolved to shut up the passages on the land also, by parties stationed in proper posts.
The Achaeans, although by this arrangement they gained the accession of the free Laconians as well as Argos, were yet far from content; they had expected that the dreaded and hated Nabis would be superseded, that the emigrants would be brought back, and that the Achaean symmachy would be extended to the whole Peloponnesus.
It was as a private citizen that he drove Nabis out of Messene and liberated the Messenians, and as a private citizen he shut the gates of Sparta against Diophanes the Achæan general and Titus himself when they were on their march against it, and so saved the Lacedæmonians from destruction.
Then, in the two extremities of Greece, Nabis, on the side of Peloponnesus, would put every thing in motion, to recover the city of Argos, and the maritime cities, from which he had been expelled by the Romans, and pent up within the walls of Lacedaemon: while, on the side of Macedonia, Philip would be ready for the field the moment he heard the alarm sounded.
He was a private citizen when he restored the Messenians to their liberty, and delivered their city from Nabis; he was also a private citizen when he rescued the Lacedaemonians, and shut the gates of Sparta against the General Diophanes, and Titus.
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