"The institution of Lycurgus was well calculated to preserve the independence of his country, but had no regard to its happiness, and very little to its liberty. As the people's consent was necessary to every law, it had so far the appearance of political liberty: but the civil liberty of it was little better than that of a man chained in a dungeon; a liberty to rest as he is. The influence of this boasted legislation on the human character was to produce warriors and politicians, and nothing else. To say that this people were happy, is to contradict every quality in human nature, except ambition. They had no other gratification: science and letters were sacrificed, as well as commerce, to the ruling passion."
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John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government (1794)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sparta
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Sparta
1822 – 1881
Sparta was a prominent city-state in Laconia in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon, while the name Sparta referred to its main settlement on the banks of the Evrotas River in the Evrotas Valley, Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. Around 650 BC, it rose to be
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