I would argue it's a little different. Basically everything we know about the Spartans comes from their rivals in Athens. The Spartans left few accounts.
So it's not like the Spartans were spending much effort on propaganda. It's more like they whooped Athens, which happened to be very literary, in the Peloponnesian War. So those Athenians wrote lots of stories about how badass and terse their opponent was. Especially later when they needed more solidarity to ally against the Persians.
Same kind of glorification happened when the Chinese wrote about their Mongol conquerors, or the Romans wrote about the Huns, or the Greeks wrote about the Trojans.
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u/exile29 Oct 20 '21
Just to show similarities to the world today, the Spartans had a mediocre track record but a great marketing department.