- Panhellenion
The Panhellenion or Panhellenium ( _el. All Greece) was an institution established in the year AD131/2 by the
Roman Emperor Hadrian while he was touring the Roman provinces of Greece.Hadrian was
philhellenic , and idealized the Classical past of Greece. The Panhellenion was part of thisphilhellenism , and was set up, withAthens at the centre, to try to recreate the apparent "unified Greece" of the fifth-century, when the Greeks took on the Persian enemy.The Panhellenion was primarily a religious organization, and most of the deeds of the institution which we have relate to its own self governing. Admission to the Panhellenion was subject to scrutiny of a city's Hellenic descent; in the age of the "
Second Sophistic " this concept of "Greekness" was archaic, because to be Greek in this period generally meant having gained Greek culture as part of the "paideia " or Greek education system.Fighting between the delegates turned the Panhellenion into an institution like the
Delian League of the fifth century BC (which to some extent it was emulating) and the Panhellenion did not survive in any real sense after Hadrian's death.In AD137
Panhellenic Games were also expanded at Athens as part of the ideal ofPanhellenism and harking back to thePanathenaic Festival of the fifth century.References
*cite book
last = Boardman
first = John
coauthors = G. L. Hammond, D. M. Lewis, F. W. Walbank, A. E. Astin, J. A. Crook, Andrew Lintott, Elizabeth Rawson, Alan K. Bowman, Edward Champlin, Averil Cameron, Peter Garnsey
title = The Cambridge ancient history
publisher = Cambridge University Press
year = 2005
isbn = 0521263352
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