I say this as a guy who loves all that theme park machismo (Kratos, supersoldiers in Halo called Spartans, military tattoos of the Spartan Lambda... of which I have one of... The whole array of badass horseshit) but it's amazing how fucking good the PR department was for Sparta in the wake of Thermopylae considering that as a city-state, it was questionably stable at best, despite it's size, and were practically hated by everyone in Greece.
In military matters... sure they were one of the stronger land forces in Greek Antiquity but they also had Zero Navy to speak of and they were dogmatic in their doctrines to the point of rigid inflexibility which is how they got fucking shitstomped by Thebes at Leuctra. They only survived the Persian Invasion by throwing their lot in with Athens and they only won the Peloponnesian War by becoming a Persian Client State.
Again, I enjoy theme park Sparta as much as the next jumped up retired grunt, but the historian in me is baffled at how a relatively typical Greek Oligarchy with more slaves than normal and an isolationist diplomatic bent became known as literal Demigods in battle.
The best "modern" equivalent I can think of is if the Cape Colony became known for producing Super-soldiers.