Machanidas () was a tyrant of Lacedaemon near the end of the 3rd century BC. He was defeated and slain by Philopoemen.
Machanidas () was a tyrant of Lacedaemon near the end of the 3rd century BC. He was defeated and slain by Philopoemen.
== Accession == Machanidas was in a band of Tarentine mercenaries, perhaps a leader, in the pay of the Spartan government. The history of Lacedaemon at this period is obscure. The means by which he obtained the tyranny are unknown. He was probably at first associated with Pelops, son and successor of Lycurgus on the double throne of Sparta. He either eclipsed or expelled Lycurgus. Livy refers to Machanidas as "the tyrant of the Lacedaemonians". Like his predecessor, Machanidas had no hereditary or other justification for taking the crown. However, unlike Lycurgus he respected neither the ephors nor the laws, and ruled by the swords of his followers. Argos and the Achaean League found him a restless and relentless neighbor, whom they could not resist without the aid of Macedonia. Rome in the 11th year of the Second Punic War, was anxious to detain Philip V and employed him as an ally.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).