Paul A. Rahe opens The Spartan Regime with an astute point on how we perceive the ancient Spartans and Athenians.
Of course, we may prefer the Athenians, regarding them as more like ourselves, and we may well be right not only in that judgment but in our moral and political preferences as well. Our predilections notwithstanding, however, we name sports teams after the Spartans, and it is about them (and not the Athenians) that we ordinarily write novels and make films—which says a great deal about the ancient Lacedaemonians and perhaps also something about the unsatisfied longings that lurk just below the surface within modern bourgeois societies.
He doesn’t provide any examples, but even Athens Academy high school in Georgia chose their sports team name to be the Spartans.
The most obvious examples come from the Frank Miller’s 300 graphic novel and the blockbuster movie about it. The lackluster sequel that focuses entirely on the heroic deeds of Themistocles and the Athenians has fallen to the wayside, perhaps not just because it was a subpar movie.