"Sparta preserved its regional dominance more by restraint than by hunger for conquest. Thucydides’s history portrays the Spartans as reluctant to go to war and

"Sparta preserved its regional dominance more by restraint than by hunger for conquest. Thucydides’s history portrays the Spartans as reluctant to go to war and often more merciful than their more liberal-minded opponents." As Donald Kagan writes in his book about the Peloponnesian War, this was very likely self interested restraint - the entire basis of their economy was the exploitation of the Helots, and there was a fear that battles of conquest would have resulted in a revolt back in Athens. There was also the fact that every time the Spartans attempted even modest naval excursions, it completely failed, making a larger empire in an area with a lot of water impractical. I totally agree with emulating the best in other cultures as the other says at the bottom in summary, but in some cases, there are trade-offs that are hard to decouple. In the case of Sparta, the freedom to ignore the accumulation of wealth was a luxury earned by an elite on the forced labor of others.