>As an amateur historian, I never understood the fascination for Sparta.

Well, for one thing, Plato was an adherent of the 30 tyrants, who were allied and admirers of the Spartans. Since he kind of invented Western Civilization, Laconophilia has a rather long and storied tradition.

By 369 BC (~20 years before Plato's death), the Thebans defetead the Spartans with the messenians (the helots). That was the end of Sparta as a major military power. After this, the Spartan men had to work on farms to feed themselves and their children, and they couldn’t train all the time. So they weren’t the best army anymore, and Sparta became just another small town, without much power.

The fact that Spartan treatment of the Helots was considered abominable by other slave-owning states of the time should reveal how bankrupt the Spartan system was.

Indeed. They were also a reduced population in comparison with other city-states. They weren't that richer also, because their fascists system of the state is everything. To me they did some quite nice battles, but aside from that, there are few little things to admire from spartans.

Blame 300 the movie