The field of reception studies has long recognized how Classics is received in music. In such a paradigm, historical themes of Spartan warriors fiercely defending their freedom against the tyranny of a numerically superior foe are at home on a heavy metal record. To the founding mother of the academic study of metal, Deena Weinstein, metalвЂ™s spiritual core is a sort of ditheism of Chaos and Dionysus, forces that simultaneously disrupt systems of order, conformity, and control and liberate the animal instincts of the individual. Yet while ancient laconophiles sought an orderly and virtuous society, metal has often had very different aims.

SocratesвЂ™ pupils were no doubt disillusioned with Athenian democracy following his execution in 399 BCE, and the Spartan alternative arguably inspired in PlatoвЂ™s Republic and XenophonвЂ™s Constitution of the Spartans was a type of escapist fantasy.ДЇrom the early 1970s, heavy metal music also developed as a reactive expression of social alienation adopting the sound, style, and symbols of a counterculture that rejects and inverts the mainstream in a manner similar to PunkвЂ™s development as a rejection of Disco. What drew ancient philosophers and heavy metal bands alike to Sparta may be a feeling of disenchantment with their respective mainstreams. In a word, each expressed a degree of laconophilia. It might seem that Plato and Xenophon have little in common with heavy metal bands however, they do share an admiration for those warlords of Laconia: the Spartans.

Heavy metal soundtrack