Laconophilia
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Laconophilia is love or admiration of Sparta and of the Spartan culture or constitution. The term derives from Laconia, 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 aristocratic and virtuous ways, the stable order of their political life and their constitution, with its tripartite mixed government. According to Karl Otfried Müller, 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, 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."
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