Laconophilia is love or admiration of Sparta

Sparta

Sparta or Lacedaemon, was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the banks of the River Eurotas in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. It emerged as a political entity around the 10th century BC, when the invading Dorians subjugated the local, non-Dorian population. From c...

 and of the Spartan culture or constitution. The term derives from Laconia

Laconia

Laconia , also known as Lacedaemonia, is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Peloponnese. It is situated in the southeastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. Its administrative capital is Sparti...

, the part of the Peloponnesus that the Spartans inhabited.

Admirers of the Spartans typically praise their valor and success in war, their "laconic" austerity and self-restraint, their aristocrat

Aristocracy (class)

The aristocracy are people considered to be in the highest social class in a society which has or once had a political system of Aristocracy. Aristocrats possess hereditary titles granted by a monarch, which once granted them feudal or legal privileges, or deriving, as in Ancient Greece and India,...

ic and virtuous

Virtue

Virtue is moral excellence. A virtue is a positive trait or quality subjectively deemed to be morally excellent and thus is valued as a foundation of principle and good moral being....

 ways, the stable order

Eunomia (goddess)

Eunomia was a minor Greek goddess of law and legislation, and one of the daughters of Themis and Zeus.-Mythology:...

 of their political life and their constitution, with its tripartite mixed government

Mixed government

Mixed government, also known as a mixed constitution, is a form of government that integrates elements of democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy. In a mixed government, some issues are decided by the majority of the people, some other issues by few, and some other issues by a single person...

. According to Karl Otfried Müller

Karl Otfried Müller

Karl Otfried Müller , was a German scholar and Philodorian, or admirer of ancient Sparta, who introduced the modern study of Greek mythology.-Biography:...

, the founding figure of modern Laconophilia, "Many of the noblest and best of the Athenians always considered the Spartan state nearly as an ideal theory realised in practice.". H.D.F. Kitto notes that Sparta, in contrast to Athens

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

, was admired not for its art and literature, but for the disciplined character of its citizens. The Lacademonians were masters "not of creating things in words or stone, but of men."

Athens

In ancient Athens, Laconophilia began as a current of thought and feeling after the Persian Wars. Some, like Cimon, son of Miltiades

Miltiades the Younger

Miltiades the Younger or Miltiades IV was the son of one Cimon, a renowned Olympic chariot-racer. Miltiades considered himself a member of the Aeacidae, and is known mostly for his role in the Battle of Marathon; as well as his rather tragic downfall afterwards. His son Cimon was a major Athenian...

, believed that Athens should ally with Sparta against the Persian Empire. Cimon persuaded the Athenians to send soldiers to aid Sparta, when the helots (serfs of the Spartans) revolted and fortified Mount Ithome

Ithome

Mount Ithome or Ithomi, previously Vourkano or Vurcano before being changed back to Ithome, is the northernmost of twin peaks in Messenia, Greece. Mount Ithome rises to about , about over Valyra, the seat of Ithomi, the former municipality...

. The Spartans sent the Athenians home again with thanks, lest the democratic Athenian ideas influence the helots or the perioeci.

Some Athenians, especially those who disliked commerce, preferred a closed society

Open society

The open society is a concept originally developed by philosopher Henri Bergson and then by Austrian and British philosopher Karl Popper. In open societies, government is purported to be responsive and tolerant, and political mechanisms are said to be transparent and flexible...

 and the rule of the few

Oligarchy

Oligarchy is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with an elite class distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, commercial, and/or military legitimacy...

, believing that Sparta was a better system than they had at Athens. Some went so far as to imitate Spartan manners: going around Athens long-haired and unwashed, like the Spartiate

Spartiate

The Spartiates or Homoioi were the males of Sparta known to the Spartans as "peers" or "men of equal status". From a young age, male Spartiates were trained for battle and put through grueling challenges intended to craft them into fearless warriors...

s. (Of course, these categories overlapped; Cimon was representative of the Spartans at Athens, and named one of his sons "Lacedaemonius

Lacedaimonius

Lacedaimonius was an Athenian general, the son of Cimon. Like his father and grandfather Lacedaimonius was a general and served Athens. His name comes from Lacedaimon, another name for the city state of Sparta. Cimon so admired the Spartans he showed them a sign of goodwill by naming his son after...

".) In Plato's Republic, which is set in the 5th century BC, Socrates says that the Spartan and Cretan

Crete

Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...

 type of political regime is the favorite of "the many".

The extreme Laconophile oligarchs seized power in Athens in 404 BC, and held it for eleven months, with the assistance of a Spartan army. They are known as the Thirty Tyrants

Thirty Tyrants

The Thirty Tyrants were a pro-Spartan oligarchy installed in Athens after its defeat in the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC. Contemporary Athenians referred to them simply as "the oligarchy" or "the Thirty" ; the expression "Thirty Tyrants" is due to later historians...

; they governed by exile, arbitrary arrests, and judicial murder.

In the Battle of Leuctra

Battle of Leuctra

The Battle of Leuctra was a battle fought on July 6, 371 BC, between the Boeotians led by Thebans and the Spartans along with their allies amidst the post-Corinthian War conflict. The battle took place in the neighbourhood of Leuctra, a village in Boeotia in the territory of Thespiae...

, in 371 BC, the Spartans were defeated. As a result of that single battle, Sparta's allies revolted, and the helots of Messenia

Messenia

Messenia is a regional unit in the southwestern part of the Peloponnese region, one of 13 regions into which Greece has been divided by the Kallikratis plan, implemented 1 January 2011...

 were freed. After this, the Spartan economy became less able to support professional soldiers, and the inequalities between the supposedly equal citizens

Spartiate

The Spartiates or Homoioi were the males of Sparta known to the Spartans as "peers" or "men of equal status". From a young age, male Spartiates were trained for battle and put through grueling challenges intended to craft them into fearless warriors...

 increased.

As a result, the reputation of Sparta, either as a military success, or as a guide in domestic affairs, diminished greatly. One important group of Laconophiles remained, however.

Philosophers

Some of the young men who were followers of Socrates

Socrates

Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...

 had been Laconophiles. Socrates himself is portrayed as having often praised the laws of Sparta and Crete. Critias

Critias

Critias , born in Athens, son of Callaeschrus, was an uncle of Plato, and a leading member of the Thirty Tyrants, and one of the most violent. He was an associate of Socrates, a fact that did not endear Socrates to the Athenian public. He was noted in his day for his tragedies, elegies and prose...

, a companion of Socrates, helped bring about the oligarchic rule of the Thirty Tyrants

Thirty Tyrants

The Thirty Tyrants were a pro-Spartan oligarchy installed in Athens after its defeat in the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC. Contemporary Athenians referred to them simply as "the oligarchy" or "the Thirty" ; the expression "Thirty Tyrants" is due to later historians...

, which was supported by Sparta. Xenophon

Xenophon

Xenophon , son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens, was a Greek historian, soldier, mercenary, philosopher and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates...

 fought with the Spartans against Athens. Plato also, in his writings, seems to prefer a Spartan-type regime over a democratic one. Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

 regarded the kind of laws adopted by Crete and Sparta as especially apt to produce virtuous and law-abiding citizens, although he also criticizes the Cretans and Spartans themselves as incompetent and corrupt, and built on a culture of war.

Greek philosophy, therefore, inherited a tradition of praising Spartan law. This was only reinforced when Agis IV

Agis IV

Agis IV , the elder son of Eudamidas II, was the 24th king of the Eurypontid dynasty of Sparta. Posterity has reckoned him an idealistic but impractical monarch.-Succession:...

 and Cleomenes III

Cleomenes III

Cleomenes III was the King of Sparta from 235-222 BC. He succeeded to the Agiad throne of Sparta after his father, Leonidas II in 235 BC.From 229 BC to 222 BC, Cleomenes waged war against the Achaean League under Aratus of Sicyon. Domestically, he is known for his attempt to reform the Spartan state...

 attempted to "restore the ancestral constitution" at Sparta, which no man then living had experienced. This attempt ended with the collapse of the institutions of Lycurgus, and one Nabis

Nabis

Nabis was ruler of Sparta from 207 BC to 192 BC, during the years of the First and Second Macedonian Wars and the War against Nabis. After taking the throne by executing two claimants, he began rebuilding Sparta's power. During the Second Macedonian War, he sided with King Philip V of Macedon and...

 established a tyranny in Laconia.

In later centuries, Greek philosophers, especially Platonists, would often describe Sparta as an ideal state, strong, brave, and free from the corruptions of commerce and money. These descriptions, of which Plutarch

Plutarch

Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

's is the most complete, vary in many details. Whole books have been written, arguing what parts of these utopias are the actual customs of classical Sparta, what parts are Cleomenes' reconstructions, and what parts are sheer imagination.

It became fashionable for the Romans

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 to visit Lacedaemon and see the rites of Artemis Orthia

Artemis Orthia

The Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia, an Archaic site devoted in Classical times to Artemis, was one of the most important religious sites in the Greek city-state of Sparta.- Sanctuary :...

, as a sort of tourist attraction – the nearest Greece had to offer to gladiatorial games.

Contrary views

Even in ancient cultures, Laconophilia was a tendency, not an absolute. None of the contemporaries of the Lycurgan Constitution praised Sparta without reservations, except the Spartans themselves.

Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...

 of Dorian Halicarnassus

Halicarnassus

Halicarnassus was an ancient Greek city at the site of modern Bodrum in Turkey. It was located in southwest Caria on a picturesque, advantageous site on the Ceramic Gulf. The city was famous for the tomb of Mausolus, the origin of the word mausoleum, built between 353 BC and 350 BC, and...

, consistently portrays the Spartans, except when actually facing battle, as rustic, hesitant, uncooperative, corrupt, and naïve. Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

 had Socrates

Socrates

Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...

 argue

Republic (Plato)

The Republic is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato around 380 BC concerning the definition of justice and the order and character of the just city-state and the just man...

 that a state which really followed the simple life would not need a warrior class; one which was luxurious and aggressive would need a group of philosophers, like Plato himself, to guide and deceive the guardians. Even Xenophon

Xenophon

Xenophon , son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens, was a Greek historian, soldier, mercenary, philosopher and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates...

's encomium of the Constitution of the Lacedaemonians is not unalloyed praise.

Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

 has a long passage (Politics

Politics (Aristotle)

Aristotle's Politics is a work of political philosophy. The end of the Nicomachean Ethics declared that the inquiry into ethics necessarily follows into politics, and the two works are frequently considered to be parts of a larger treatise, or perhaps connected lectures, dealing with the...

 II,6) criticizing the Spartans: the helots

Helots

The helots: / Heílôtes) were an unfree population group that formed the main population of Laconia and the whole of Messenia . Their exact status was already disputed in antiquity: according to Critias, they were "especially slaves" whereas to Pollux, they occupied a status "between free men and...

 keep rebelling; the Spartan women are luxurious; the magistrates (and especially the ephor

Ephor

An ephor was the leader of ancient Sparta and shared power with the Spartan king...

s) are irresponsible; reaching decisions by the loudest yell in the apella

Apella

The Apella was the popular deliberative assembly in the Ancient Greek city-state of Sparta, corresponding to the ecclesia in most other Greek states...

 is silly; the wealth of the citizens is unequal (so that too many are losing the resources necessary to be a citizen and a hoplite); and the Spartiates let each other evade taxes, so the city is poor and the individual citizens greedy. (Above all, the Spartans know no other arts than war, so in peace they are incompetent and corrupt.) The Cretan institutions, he says, are even worse.

Even after the collapse, and idealization, of Sparta, Polybius

Polybius

Polybius , Greek ) was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic Period noted for his work, The Histories, which covered the period of 220–146 BC in detail. The work describes in part the rise of the Roman Republic and its gradual domination over Greece...

 wrote, "My object, then, in this digression is to make it manifest by actual facts that, for guarding their own country with absolute safety, and for preserving their own freedom, the legislation of Lycurgus was entirely sufficient; and for those who are content with these objects we must concede that there neither exists nor ever has existed a constitution and civil order preferable to that of Sparta." (Histories VI, 50) . I,6)

Modern Laconophilia

Admiration of Sparta continued in the Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

. Niccolò Machiavelli

Niccolò Machiavelli

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian historian, philosopher, humanist, and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance. He is one of the main founders of modern political science. He was a diplomat, political philosopher, playwright, and a civil servant of the Florentine Republic...

 agreed that Sparta

Sparta

Sparta or Lacedaemon, was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the banks of the River Eurotas in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. It emerged as a political entity around the 10th century BC, when the invading Dorians subjugated the local, non-Dorian population. From c...

 was noteworthy for its long and static existence, but nevertheless asserted that, for virtù and glory, Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 was much preferable (Discourses). The Elizabethan English constitutionalist John Aylmer

John Aylmer (English constitutionalist)

John Aylmer was an English bishop, constitutionalist and a Greek scholar.-Early life and career:He was born at Aylmer Hall, Tilney St. Lawrence, Norfolk...

 compared the mixed government of Tudor England with the Spartan republic, stating that "Lacedemonia [meaning Sparta], [was] the noblest and best city governed that ever was". He commended it as a model for England. The Swiss-French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...

 contrasted Sparta favourably with Athens in his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences

Discourse on the Arts and Sciences

A Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences , more commonly known as Discourse on the Sciences and Arts , is an essay by Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau which argued that the arts and sciences corrupt human morality...

, arguing that its austere constitution was preferable to the more cultured nature of Athenian life. Samuel Adams

Samuel Adams

Samuel Adams was an American statesman, political philosopher, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. As a politician in colonial Massachusetts, Adams was a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, and was one of the architects of the principles of American...

 expressed a disappointment that the American republic was failing to meet his ideal of a "Christian Sparta".

Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of America's first constitutional lawyers and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury...

 mocked the Laconophilia of his era as unrealistic:

We may preach till we are tired of the theme, the necessity of disinterestedness in republics, without making a single proselyte. The virtuous declaimer will neither persuade himself nor any other person to be content with a double mess of porridge, instead of a reasonable stipend for his services. We might as soon reconcile ourselves to the Spartan community of goods and wives, to their iron coin, their long beards, or their black broth. There is a total dissimulation in the circumstances, as well as the manners, of society among us; and it is as ridiculous to seek for models in the simple ages of Greece and Rome, as it would be to go in quest of them among the Hottentots and Laplanders.

Laconophilia increased in importance during the nineteenth century. The development of the English Public School

Public School (UK)

A public school, in common British usage, is a school that is neither administered nor financed by the state or from taxpayer contributions, and is instead funded by a combination of endowments, tuition fees and charitable contributions, usually existing as a non profit-making charitable trust...

s was influenced by the schooling of Spartan children, as were Ivy League

Ivy League

The Ivy League is an athletic conference comprising eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States. The conference name is also commonly used to refer to those eight schools as a group...

 American universities. Sparta was also used as a model of social purity by Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis....

 stated that "all modern egalitarian radicals, from Rousseau to the Jacobins

Jacobin Club

The Jacobin Club was the most famous and influential political club in the development of the French Revolution, so-named because of the Dominican convent where they met, located in the Rue St. Jacques , Paris. The club originated as the Club Benthorn, formed at Versailles from a group of Breton...

…imagined the republican France as a new Sparta".

Karl Müller

A new element was introduced into Laconophilia by Karl Otfried Müller

Karl Otfried Müller

Karl Otfried Müller , was a German scholar and Philodorian, or admirer of ancient Sparta, who introduced the modern study of Greek mythology.-Biography:...

, who linked Spartan ideals to the supposed racial superiority of the Dorians, the ethnic sub-group of the Greeks to which the Spartans belonged. While the Greek Laconophiles like Plutarch had praised the Spartans, they did not extend this admiration to the Dorians as a whole. Plutarch argued that the founder of their constitution, Lycurgus, had inherited corrupt Dorian institutions. Argos

Argos

Argos is a city and a former municipality in Argolis, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Argos-Mykines, of which it is a municipal unit. It is 11 kilometres from Nafplion, which was its historic harbour...

, the traditional enemy of Sparta, was also a Dorian state; so were Corinth

Corinth

Corinth is a city and former municipality in Corinthia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Corinth, of which it is the seat and a municipal unit...

, Rhodes

Rhodes

Rhodes is an island in Greece, located in the eastern Aegean Sea. It is the largest of the Dodecanese islands in terms of both land area and population, with a population of 117,007, and also the island group's historical capital. Administratively the island forms a separate municipality within...

, and Syracuse

Syracuse, Italy

Syracuse is a historic city in Sicily, the capital of the province of Syracuse. The city is notable for its rich Greek history, culture, amphitheatres, architecture, and as the birthplace of the preeminent mathematician and engineer Archimedes. This 2,700-year-old city played a key role in...

, three of the most commercial states in Greece.

In 1824, however, Müller wrote Die Dorier, a history of the Dorian "race". It has been described as a "thousand-page fantasia", which portrays the Dorians as a heroic and noble race who expanded into Greece from the north. He used the new disciplines of comparative linguistics

Comparative linguistics

Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness....

 and source-criticism to argue that the Dorians represented a distinct ethno-linguistic group whose original culture could be isolated from later influences. He linked the origin of the Dorians to the mythic Myrmidons

Myrmidons

The Myrmidons or Myrmidones were legendary people of Greek history. They were very brave and skilled warriors commanded by Achilles, as described in Homer's Iliad. Their eponymous ancestor was Myrmidon, a king of Thessalian Phthia, who was the son of Zeus and "wide-ruling" Eurymedousa, a...

 of the Trojan war, and their leader Achilles

Achilles

In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....

.

Nazi Laconophilia

Müller's emphasis on the northern origins and racial qualities of the Spartans later fed into the development of Nordicism, the theory of the superiority of a North European Aryan

Aryan race

The Aryan race is a concept historically influential in Western culture in the period of the late 19th century and early 20th century. It derives from the idea that the original speakers of the Indo-European languages and their descendants up to the present day constitute a distinctive race or...

 master race

Master race

Master race was a phrase and concept originating in the slave-holding Southern US. The later phrase Herrenvolk , interpreted as 'master race', was a concept in Nazi ideology in which the Nordic peoples, one of the branches of what in the late-19th and early-20th century was called the Aryan race,...

. Later German writers regularly portrayed the Spartans as a model for the modern Prussian state, which also emphasised military self-discipline. It was a short step from this to argue that the Prussians and the Spartans were originally of the same race. Frank H. Hankins

Frank H. Hankins

Frank Hamilton Hankins was an American sociologist and anthropologist who was the president of the American Sociological Society in 1938. He wrote the book The Racial Basis of Civilization which was critical of Nordic theory.- References :...

 summarises views of the American Nordicist Madison Grant

Madison Grant

Madison Grant was an American lawyer, historian and physical anthropologist, known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist...

, writing in 1916:

Sparta is pictured as particularly Nordic on account of the purity of its Dorian stock, while Athens is more of a mixture. Sparta thus exhibited the military efficiency, the thorough organization and the patriotic sacrifice of the individual to the state characteristic of Nordics everywhere and exemplified in modern Prussia, while Athens exhibited the intellectual brilliancy, the instability, the extreme individualism, the tendency to treason and conspiracy so characteristic of populations having a large Mediterranean element

Mediterranean race

The Mediterranean race was one of the three sub-categories into which the Caucasian race and the people of Europe were divided by anthropologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, following the publication of William Z. Ripley's book The Races of Europe...

.

These arguments were repeated by Nazi race theorists such as Hans F. K. Günther and Alfred Rosenberg

Alfred Rosenberg

' was an early and intellectually influential member of the Nazi Party. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart; he later held several important posts in the Nazi government...

. Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

 particularly praised the Spartans, recommending in 1928 that Germany should imitate them by limiting "the number allowed to live". He added that "The Spartans were once capable of such a wise measure... The subjugation of 350,000 Helots by 6,000 Spartans was only possible because of the racial superiority of the Spartans." The Spartans had created "the first racialist state.".

Following the invasion of the USSR, Hitler insisted that the Slavs should be treated like the helots under the Spartans: “They [the Spartans] came as conquerors, and they took everything”, and so should the Germans. A Nazi officer specified that “the Germans would have to assume the position of the Spartiates, while... the Russians were the Helots.”

Contemporary Laconophilia

Modern Laconophilia has been present in popular culture, particularly with reference to the Battle of Thermopylae

Battle of Thermopylae

The Battle of Thermopylae was fought between an alliance of Greek city-states, led by King Leonidas of Sparta, and the Persian Empire of Xerxes I over the course of three days, during the second Persian invasion of Greece. It took place simultaneously with the naval battle at Artemisium, in August...

, as portrayed in films such as The 300 Spartans

The 300 Spartans

The 300 Spartans is a 1962 Cinemascope film depicting the Battle of Thermopylae. Made with the cooperation of the Greek government, it was shot in the village of Perachora in the Peloponnese...

. It is also evident in the graphic novel 300 and the film 300

300 (film)

300 is a 2007 American fantasy action film based on the 1998 comic series of the same name by Frank Miller. It is a fictionalized retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae. The film was directed by Zack Snyder, while Miller served as executive producer and consultant...

derived from it.

In the modern world, the adjective "spartan" is used to imply simplicity, frugality, or avoidance of luxury and comfort. Because of their reputation for physical prowess the name "Spartans" has been adopted by teams in several sports. Michigan State University adopted "Spartans" as their collegiate team identity in 1925. In addition to the Michigan State Spartans

Michigan State Spartans

The Michigan State Spartans are the athletic team that represent Michigan State University. The school's athletic program includes 25 varsity sports teams. Their mascot is a Spartan warrior named Sparty, and the school colors are green and white...

, other teams include the San Jose State Spartans

San José State Spartans

The San Jose State Spartans is the name of the athletic teams representing San Jose State University. SJSU sports teams compete in the Western Athletic Conference at the NCAA Division I level...

, Ħamrun Spartans, Hannover Spartans, Norfolk State Spartans and others. Soccer clubs include AC Sparta Prague (Czech republic

Czech Republic

The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

) Spartans F.C.

Spartans F.C.

Spartans Football Club are a Scottish football club from Edinburgh. They are managed by Sam Lynch and Mickey Lawson. They were formed in 1951 by ex-players of Edinburgh University and the original intention was to field a team of graduates of the University, however they have players from...

 (Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

), and Sparta Rotterdam

Sparta Rotterdam

Sparta Rotterdam is the oldest professional football team in the Netherlands, established on April 1, 1888. Sparta is one of three professional football clubs from Rotterdam, the others being Excelsior and Feyenoord , the latter playing in the Eredivisie.-History:Sparta was first founded in 1887....

 (Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

). The name Spartan is also featured in the video game Halo

Halo: Combat Evolved

Halo: Combat Evolved, frequently referred to as Halo: CE, or Halo 1, is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios. The first game of the Halo franchise, it was released on November 15, 2001 as a launch title for the Xbox gaming system, and is...

, as a genetically engineered sub race of humans.