The help asked of Antigonus Doson was given with fatal readiness; but it had to be purchased by the admission of a Macedonian garrison into the Acrocorinthus, one of those “fetters of Greece,” the recovery of which had been among Aratus’s earliest and most glorious triumphs. The battle of Sellasia (B.C. 221) settled the question of Spartan influence. Cleomenes fled to Alexandria and never returned. Sparta was not enslaved by Antigonus; who on the contrary professed to restore her ancient constitution,—probably meaning that the Ephoralty destroyed by Cleomenes was to be reconstituted, and the exiles banished by him recalled. Practically she was left a prey to a series of unscrupulous tyrants who one after the other managed to obtain absolute power, Lycurgus (B.C. 220-210), Machanidas, B.C. 210-207; Nabis, B.C. 207-192; who, though differing in their home administrations, all agreed in using the enmity of the Aetolians in order to harass and oppress the Achaeans in every possible way. [Sidenote: B.C. 213. Death of Aratus.] Aratus died in B.C. 213. The last seven years of his life were embittered by much ill success in his struggles with the Aetolians; and by seeing Philip V., of whose presence in the Peloponnese he was the main cause, after rendering some brilliant services to the league, both in the Peloponnese and the invasion of Aetolia, develop some of the worst vices of the tyrant; and he believed himself, whether rightly or wrongly, to be poisoned by Philip’s order: “This is the reward,” he said to an attendant when he felt himself dying, “of my friendship for Philip.”[127] The history of the league after his death followed the same course for some years. The war with the Aetolians went on, sometimes slackly, sometimes vigorously, as Philip V. was or was not diverted by contests with his barbarian neighbours, or by schemes for joining the Carthaginian assaults upon the Roman power. [Sidenote: B.C. 208-183, Philopoemen.] [Sidenote: B.C. 193.] [Sidenote: B.C. 195-194.]