[GolfPopper]

>My interest in Sparta is that it exemplifies how elite a group of people can become when they focus on one thing.

Except they weren't particularly elite. As (already mentioned) A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry author Bret Devereaux points out[1]: "Instead, what we might say is that the Spartans phalanx was, in most respects, just like every other Greek hoplite phalanx, with the addition that Spartan command and coordination was somewhat better, but hardly excellent by the broader standards of antiquity."

And, as he also observes, any Spartan superiority didn't manifest on the battlefield:

Spartan Victories: 18.5, Spartan Defeats: 18, Draws: 1.5, Spartan Batting Average (victories/battles): 0.486

1. https://acoup.blog/2019/09/20/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...

[connorpeters]

I will give it a read, thanks for the source. I'm definitely guilty of indulging in pop culture impressions of the Spartan warrior being the most disciplined and elite singular unit in history so this will be an interesting read.

Does Thermopylae count as a loss by this definition? As I'm sure it does, that doesn't dispel much of the myth of the prowess of the individual Spartan warrior, which is really what I find intriguing about the whole thing.

[jcranmer]

Yes, Thermopylae is counted as a defeat in coalition (the author gives a full list of every battle and his categorization in the linked blog post, you can read it for yourself).

One of the Spartan losses is when they decide to pretend to not be Spartan so they can surprise their opponents with their skill, but they turn out instead to be utterly wrecked by their opponents. The Spartans really do seem to be mediocre fighters (not good, but not bad either) with a stellar PR agency.

[siriaan]

I'd love to see someone make a kind of response to 300 based on the Battle of Leuctra where the Spartans got their butts handed to them by the Thebans

[kergonath]

> I'm definitely guilty of indulging in pop culture impressions of the Spartan warrior being the most disciplined and elite singular unit in history so this will be an interesting read.

There are better examples of forces that were actually good, even if they are less flattering in pop culture. For example, there is a reason why the Romans ended up controlling the Mediterranean and not the Spartans.