Panhellenion

The Panhellenion or Panhellenium (All Greece) was an institution of cities 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 this philhellenism, and was set up, with Athens 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 of Panhellenism and harking back to the Panathenaic Festival of the fifth century.

From inscriptions found, member cities were Athens, Megara, Sparta, Chalcis, Argos, Acraephiae, Epidaurus, Amphicleia, Methana ,Corinth, Hypata, Demetrias, Thessalonica ,Magnesia on the Maeander, as well the cities of Crete.