LED BY PLUTARCH, the philosophical disciples of Plato in the second century a.d. became known as the Middle Platonists. Living many centuries after the Spartan heyday, they felt nostalgia for Sparta. Their admiration for acts of courage, such as those undertaken at Thermopylae, is exemplified by the Greco-Roman author Maximus of Tyre: “The pure Spartans were educated without restraint, with an erect soul, nourished in liberty, whipped and scourged, and exercised in hunting, in wandering on mountains, and other labors, and when they were sufficiently accustomed to endurance, then, being furnished with spear and shield, and marching: under law as their leader, they fought for liberty and the safety of Sparta.” He also lauded Sparta’s founder, Lycurgus, for having established “a city without walls, without fear, which was not a…
