Sparta's power ended long ago, but its legend never did. For more than two thousand years, writers, revolutionaries, soldiers, dictators and filmmakers have looked to Sparta for inspiration. What they saw often said more about themselves than about Sparta.
The mirage
In 1933, the French scholar François Ollier coined the phrase “the Spartan mirage” to describe the idealized image of Sparta created by ancient outsiders. Because Spartans wrote little and kept foreigners at a distance, other Greeks projected onto Sparta their own hopes and fears. Some Athenian aristocrats, unhappy with democracy, admired Sparta's discipline and order; they were mocked as “Laconizers” for imitating Spartan dress and manners.
Philosophers
Plato drew on Spartan features, such as communal meals, state education and training for women, in designing the ideal city of his Republic. Xenophon, an Athenian who fought alongside Spartans and sent his sons to the agoge, wrote an admiring account of the Spartan constitution. Aristotle was more critical, arguing that a society organized entirely for war would fail in peace, and that Sparta's laws had made its men brave but its women undisciplined and its land concentrated in few hands. Centuries later, Plutarch's lives of Lycurgus and other Spartans shaped how Europeans imagined Sparta.
Modern admirers
In the eighteenth century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau praised Sparta as a model of civic virtue and equality among citizens, contrasting it with luxurious, corrupt modern societies. Some French revolutionaries admired Spartan austerity and patriotism. The American founders read Plutarch, though most were wary of Sparta's harshness; Thermopylae became a symbol of free men resisting tyranny.
The legend also had darker admirers. Some Nazi leaders admired Sparta as a model of a racially pure warrior state, citing its treatment of weak infants and its rule over the helots. In January 1943, as the German army was being destroyed at Stalingrad, Hermann Göring compared the doomed soldiers to the three hundred at Thermopylae. The comparison was false in every way that mattered: the soldiers at Stalingrad were invaders, not defenders.
Popular culture
In 1998 the comic artist Frank Miller published 300, a graphic novel about Thermopylae, adapted into a hugely popular film in 2006. It presented the Spartans as heroic, muscular defenders of freedom and the Persians as monstrous. Historians criticized it for its inaccuracies and its portrayal of Persians; the government of Iran condemned it. Its slogans, such as “This is Sparta!”, became internet memes. The phrase “molon labe” has been adopted by various modern groups, including some American gun rights activists and military units, each giving it their own meaning.
What Sparta really teaches
A balanced view recognizes real achievements and real horrors.
- Courage and solidarity. Spartan soldiers showed extraordinary discipline and self-sacrifice. Thermopylae, whatever its myths, was a real act of courage that helped defend Greece.
- Constitutional checks. Sparta's mixed constitution limited the power of its kings.
- Women's status. Spartan women enjoyed rights to property and education unusual in the ancient world.
- Slavery and terror. The whole system rested on the brutal domination of the helots.
- Conformity. Sparta suppressed individuality and produced little lasting art, philosophy or science.
- Fragility. Its refusal to widen citizenship led to its decline.
Freedom for whom?
The defenders at Thermopylae are often celebrated as fighters for freedom. In an important sense they were: Greek cities fought to remain independent of a foreign empire. But the freedom of Spartan citizens depended on the unfreedom of the helots, who probably outnumbered them many times over. Herodotus tells of a Spartan named Demaratus, an exiled king living at Xerxes' court, who explained to the Persian king that Spartans were free, yet had a master they feared more than Xerxes' subjects feared him: the law. That was true for citizens. For the helots, the master was Sparta itself.
Worked example: using Sparta in an argument
Suppose a speaker says, “We need to be more like Sparta: tough, disciplined and willing to die for our country.” How should you respond?
- What is admirable? Courage, discipline, solidarity and willingness to sacrifice for others are genuine virtues, valued in many traditions.
- What is left out? Spartan discipline was built on child removal, terror against an enslaved people and the exclusion of most residents from citizenship.
- What does the evidence say about results? Sparta was powerful for a time but rigid and fragile, and it collapsed when its foundations were challenged.
- A better question. Which Spartan virtues can be separated from Spartan injustice? Courage in defense of others, yes. A society in which some people's freedom depends on others' slavery, no.
The Spartan legend endures because it tells a stirring story about courage. Studying the real Sparta helps us keep the courage and reject the cruelty, and remember that a free society is measured by how it treats those at the bottom, not only by how bravely its citizens fight.