Philodorian
Philodorian are those people who have a love of Sparta and ancient Crete and their Doric culture and laws. It is comprised of two Greek words, "philo-" meaning "love of" and "dorian" meaning the Doric race. The Spartans and ancient Cretans were Dorians.
The ancient Cretans and Spartans engendered goodwill and honor in classical antiquity because of their valor in war and the eunomia of their political life.
- The Seven Sages of Greece were philodorians. "All these were emulators, admirers, and disciples of Spartan culture..." (1)
- Socrates, a veteran Athenian hoplite, is the most famous philodorian. Even in his own time, he was known as such but not with a favorable moniker. Aristophanes lampoons him in the Birds as "Sparta-mad" as if from the verb Lakono-maneo meaning to be mad about Laconian or Spartan ways. (2) In the Crito, Socrates acknowledges his own love of Sparta and Crete, "(his) favorite models of good government".
- Plato, another Athenian, is another famous philodorian; so much so that he also had about him the signature Spartan characteristic of "cauliflower ears" due to boxing matches. The Republic is loosely based on the Spartan government and ideals. He ends his writing career with the “Laws”. It is his magnum opus of political theory and the capstone of his learning. Despite the passing of fifty years since the death of Socrates, his viewpoint hadn’t changed and the two main characters are a Cretan and a Spartan.
- Xenophon was an Athenian gentleman and aristocrat. He too was enthralled with Sparta. After his mercenary adventures in Cyrus’s revolt, renumerated in his "The Anabasis", he retired to live in Sparta. He wrote the only surviving contemporary commentary of the Spartan constitution.
- Karl Otfried Müller was a German classicist whose love of the moral nobility of the Dorian race led him to champion its greatness against the traditional enthusiasm for Athens. (4)
References
- Protagoras, Plato, Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters, ed. by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, Bollingen Series LXXI, Princeton University Press, l961, fifth printing l969. 342e-343c; pg 336.
- The Trial of Socrates, I. F. Stone, Little Brown and Co., Boston, l988. pp 121-124
- Crito, Plato, Collected Dialogues, Edith Hamilton. 52e; pg 38.
- Paideia, Werner Jaeger. pg 81.
