Laconophilia - Modern Laconophilia

Modern Laconophilia

Admiration of Sparta continued in the Renaissance. Niccolò Machiavelli agreed that Sparta was noteworthy for its long and static existence, but nevertheless asserted that, for virtù and glory, Rome was much preferable (Discourses). The Elizabethan English constitutionalist John Aylmer compared the mixed government of Tudor England with the Spartan republic, stating that "Lacedemonia, the noblest and best city governed that ever was". He commended it as a model for England. The Swiss-French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau contrasted Sparta favourably with Athens in his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, arguing that its austere constitution was preferable to the more cultured nature of Athenian life. Samuel Adams expressed a disappointment that the American republic was failing to meet his ideal of a "Christian Sparta".

Alexander Hamilton 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 Schools was influenced by the schooling of Spartan children, as were Ivy League American universities. Sparta was also used as a model of social purity by Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. Slavoj Žižek stated that "all modern egalitarian radicals, from Rousseau to the Jacobins…imagined the republican France as a new Sparta".