Nabis, the Last King of Sparta, and His Torture Robot

The last king of Sparta to actually wield real political power was Nabis, who staged a coup d’état in 207 BCE, in which he seized the throne and murdered the reigning king Pelops. He claimed that he was a remote descendant of the Eurypontid king Demaratos of many centuries earlier and initiated sweeping social reforms that he designed to fortify his power.

Ever since antiquity, Nabis’s reputation has consistently been that of an extraordinarily cruel and sadistic tyrant. He is probably most notorious today for having supposedly constructed a horrifying torture robot modeled after his wife Apega that he could control and use to torture people into giving him large amounts of money and precious valuables. In this post, I will briefly look at who Nabis was, the events of his life, and, of course, the story of the evil torture robot.

Nabis’s historical context and reputation as a sadistic tyrant

Nabis came to power at a time when the dominant political entities in Greece itself were the kingdom of Makedonia, which controlled almost the entire northern part of the Greek mainland, and the Achaian League, which controlled most of the northern Peloponnesos.

Meanwhile, the Roman Republic was well on the ascent to power and its power would only grow throughout his reign. The kingdom of Pergamon, which was closely allied with Rome, controlled most of northwest Asia Minor. The Seleukid Empire controlled large swathes of Asia Minor as well.

Nabis’s dark reputation is at least partly a result of the fact that one of the main surviving historical sources about him and his reign is the Greek historian Polybios (lived c. 200 – c. 118 BCE), who was a child at the time of Nabis’s reign. Polybios happened to grow up as a citizen of the Greek polis of Megalopolis in Arkadia, which was a member of the Achaian League and therefore bitter enemies with Nabis’s Sparta.

Polybios was also of aristocratic upbringing and, as we shall soon see, Nabis ruthlessly persecuted the Spartan elites in ways that benefited some members of the lower classes. It is therefore unsurprising that Polybios portrays Nabis as something of a cartoon villain.

ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons showing Greece and the Aegean world in around 200 BCE at the beginning of the Second Makedonian War

Nabis’s policies

According to Polybios and other sources, including the later Roman historian Titius Livius (lived c. 59 BCE – c. 17 CE), shortly after seizing control in Sparta, Nabis instigated a series of radical social reforms to bolster his own power. He murdered all surviving members of the two traditional Spartan royal houses. He also killed and exiled many wealthy Spartiate men and confiscated large quantities of land from them.

He freed large numbers of enslaved helot men who were loyal to him and made them full Spartan citizens. He gave them much of the land he had confiscated and he forced the wives and daughters of the men he had killed or exiled to marry the newly freed helots. He also built fortifications around Sparta, tried to expand the Spartan navy, and hired large numbers of foreign mercenaries.

Polybios describes some of Nabis’s activities in his Histories 13.6. He writes, as translated by W. R. Paton:

“Nabis, tyrant of the Lakedaimonians, who had now been in power for over two years, had not yet ventured to attempt any important enterprise, the defeat of Machanidas by the Aitolians being so recent, but was occupied in laying the foundations of a lasting and oppressive tyranny.”

“For he utterly exterminated those of the royal houses​ who survived in Sparta, and banishing those citizens who were distinguished for their wealth and illustrious ancestry, gave their property and wives to the chief of his own supporters and to his mercenaries, who were for the most part murderers, rippers, highwaymen, and burglars. For such kind of people flocked sedulously to his court from all over the world, people who dared not set foot in their own countries owing to their crimes against God and man. As he constituted himself their protector and employed these men as satellites and members of his bodyguard, it was evident that his rule would long be memorable for its wickedness.”

“Besides the abuses I have mentioned, not content with banishing the citizens, he left no place safe for them in their exile and no refuge secure. For he sent men after some to slay them on their journey and killed others as they were returning from their country seats.”

“Finally, in the towns, renting through unsuspected agents the houses next door to those in which the exiles resided, he introduced Kretans into them, who breaking down the walls and shooting through the existing windows slew the exiles in their own houses either when standing or reposing, so that for the unhappy Spartans there was no place to fly to and no moment at which their lives were safe. It was by these means that he destroyed the greater number of them.”

Some of what Polybios says here is backed up by other sources and I reckon that most of this is probably factually accurate. It is, however, worth noting his negative spin here. The helot men whom Nabis set free, to whom he gave land and Spartiate wives, might think much more favorably of his reforms than a man of aristocratic upbringing like Polybios.

At the same time, most of the aristocratic Spartan women whom Nabis forced to marry newly freed helots would probably not appreciate being forcibly given as prizes to freed slaves and foreign mercenaries for their political loyalty.

ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons showing the southern Peloponnesos in the 190s BCE

Nabis’s evil torture robot

Polybios gives a famous description in his Histories 13.7 of how Nabis supposedly invented a horrifying torture device, which supposedly took the form of a life-sized, highly realistic-looking automaton of his wife Apega. He supposedly named the automaton the “Apega” after her.

Polybios recounts that this automaton had iron nails concealed underneath its dress and, if Nabis wanted to torture someone, he would make the automaton embrace them and press its nails against their flesh. He says that Nabis used this torture device to extract money, valuables, and property from people. Here is Polybios’s description, in Paton’s translation:

“He had also constructed a machine, if one can call such a thing a machine. It was in fact an image of a woman richly dressed and was a very good likeness of the wife of Nabis. Whenever he summoned any of the citizens before him with the design of extracting money from him he would begin by addressing him in kind terms, pointing out the danger to which the city and country were exposed from the Achaians and calling attention to the number of the mercenaries he was obliged to maintain to ensure the safety of his subjects, as well as to the amount spent on religious ceremonies and the public outlay of the city. If they yielded to these arguments it was sufficient for his purpose.”

“But if anyone refused and objected to pay the sum imposed, he would continue somewhat as follows: ‘Very possibly I shall not be able to persuade you, but I think this Apega of mine may do so’ — this being his wife’s name — and even as he spoke in came the image I have described. When the man offered her his hand he made the woman rise from her chair and taking her in his arms drew her gradually to his bosom.”

“Both her arms and hands as well as her breasts were covered with iron nails concealed under her dress. So that when Nabis rested his hands on her back and then by means of certain springs drew his victim towards her and increasing the pressure brought him at all in contact with her breasts he made the man thus embraced say anything and everything. Indeed by this means he killed a considerable number of those who denied him money.”

Many historians have treated this story as fundamentally factual. I personally think it is highly unlikely that anything resembling the device described by Polybios actually existed. As I mentioned previously, Nabis was a prominent enemy of Megalopolis at the time when Polybios was a small child. Polybios certainly must have heard many hostile and unsubstantiated rumors about his cruelty. The story of the Apega very much sounds to me like one of these stories.

Quite simply, building an automaton that looks like your wife to hug people with painful nails is a very impractical and unnecessarily elaborate way to torture someone in practice. It would be much simpler to just whip them, nail them to a cross, or tie them down and torture them with nails than go to the trouble of building a whole automaton for the sole purpose of creative torture. The story of the automaton, however, sounds really frightening as a story.

As I have previously discussed in my article from November 2019 about why most supposed “medieval torture devices” were not actually used for torture during the Middle Ages and my article from May 2020 about why scaphism probably wasn’t a real Achaemenid punishment, if a method of torture or execution works better as a story than as a practical method of torture, it’s usually just a story.

ABOVE: Nineteenth-century illustration showing what the artist imagined a device similar to Nabis’s Apega might have looked like in action

Nabis’s downfall

The Second Makedonian War broke out in 200 BCE. Nabis initially sided with King Philippos V of Makedonia, who rewarded him by granting him dominion over the city of Argos. As soon as it became clear that the Romans were going to win the conflict, though, Nabis swiftly defected to their side. The war ended in 197 BCE with Nabis seeming to come out ahead, since he managed to hold onto control of Argos and forge an alliance with Rome.

In 195 BCE, though, the Achaian League convinced Titus Quinctius Flamininus, the Roman proconsul, that Nabis was growing too powerful. Flamininus accordingly issued an ultimatum to Nabis, declaring that, if Nabis did not return Argos to the Achaian League, Rome would declare war. Nabis refused to return Argos, arguing that he was already in control of the city at the time when Rome had agreed to form an alliance with him. Flamininus did not take this as an excuse and he invaded, marking the beginning of the so-called “War against Nabis.”

The Romans and their allies won the war. Flamininus forced Sparta to surrender Argos to the Achaian League, to surrender the cities Sparta ruled along the coast of Lakonia (which became independent under Achaian protection), and to pay a war indemnity to Rome for the next eight years. Sparta’s power was crushed.

In 193 BCE, Nabis attempted to reconquer the cities along the coast of Lakonia that Flamininus had forced him to grant independence. The Achaian general Philopoimen, however, thwarted his efforts, so, in 192 BCE, he appealed to the Aitolian League for aid. The Aitolians responded by sending one thousand foot soldiers and three hundred horsemen for the ostensible purpose of aiding Nabis. Instead of aiding him, though, they promptly assassinated him and occupied the city.

The Spartans managed to rally against the Aitolians and drive them out of the city. They even briefly appointed a young boy named Lakonikos as king. Philopoimen, though, swiftly saw how he could exploit the situation in Sparta to the Achaian League’s advantage. Within a matter of months, he brought an army to Sparta on behalf of the Achaian League and forced Sparta to join the league and abolish the position of king, thereby bringing an end to Spartan independent rule.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the statue Philopoemen Hurt, sculpted by the French Neoclassical sculptor David d’Angers in 1837, depicting what he imagined the Achaian general Philopoimen might have looked like heroically nude, on display in the Louvre Museum