In Popular Culture
The term "spartan" became synonymous with fearlessness, harsh and cruel life, bland and lacking creativity, or simplicity by design. These characteristics is also derived from Spartan culture.
- The Gates of Fire, a novel by Steven Pressfield, which provides a gritty, first-person account of the Battle of Thermopylae from the view of a Helot.
- 300, a graphic novel and a movie based on the graphic novel, both interpreting the Battle of Thermopylae.
- On the television program Deadliest Warrior, out of 1,000 battles, the Spartan defeated the Ninja 653 times compared to 347 for the ninja defeating the Spartan. The majority of these kills were done surprisingly by the shield, which was said to deliver a blow whose force far exceeded that of car crash traumas. On Season 2, they brought back the Spartan vs. the Samurai to declare the deadliest ancient warrior, in which the Spartan beat the Samurai 527 kills to 473.
- Many colleges and universities have the Spartan as a school mascot, some of which include San Jose State University and Michigan State University (see also Sparty, Michigan State's costumed mascot). The Spartan South Midlands Football League is an English football league named after them.
- In the Halo universe, the SPARTAN program is a project designed to produce genetically augmented, power armored supersoldiers. The SPARTANs serve as the protagonists of several works and as major characters in many others; the main character of the Halo trilogy is John-117, a SPARTAN-II supersoldier, and the protagonist of Halo: Reach is SPARTAN-B312, a SPARTAN-III supersoldier. Twice in the novel Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, companies of 300 SPARTAN-IIIs are sent against numerically superior Covenant forces and succeed in their objective, but suffer almost 100% casualty rates, similar to the Battle of Thermopylae.
- Kratos, the main protagonist in God of War is a legendary Spartan demigod warrior and hero who also served the Spartan army as a high-ranking officer.
- A number of military aircraft have been named after the Spartans, including the Alenia C-27J Spartan, C-27A Spartan, and the Simmonds Spartan.
Read more about this topic: Spartan Army
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