Hadrian and Panhellenion League

[Ptolemy]

While googling i read the biography of emperor Hadrian on encyclopaedia britannica.

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-2962?tocId=2962

Among other, the encyclopaedia says:

He created the Panhellenion, a federation of Greeks that was based at Athens, which gave equal representation to all Greek cities and thereafter played a conspicuous part in the history of Roman Greece.

According to the Panhellenion Leaque who started about 131 AD, a city could take part ONLYif the city could prove her "greekness". This "greekness" should be as cultural as much as ancestral.

From inscriptions found we know that certain city members who proved their "greekness" among others were Athens, Megara, Sparta, Chalcis, Argos, Epidaurus, Amphicleia, Corinth and...Thessalonica. :laugh:

[Istor]

http://www.macedonian-heritage.gr/HellenicMacedonia/en/C1.6.html

:)

[Ptolemy]

"Hadrian... also founded a temple of `Zeus Panhellenios',
and established Panhellenic games and an annual Panhelle-
nic assembly of deputies from all the cities of Greece
and all those outside which could prove their foundation
from Greece;... The importance attached to Hadrian's
institution is best illustrated by an early third-
century inscription from Thessalonica honouring a local
magnate, T.Aelius Geminius Macedo, who had not only held -›Makedon|
magistracies and provided timber for a basilica in his
own city, and been Imperial `curator' of Apollonia, but
had been archon of the Panhellenic congress in Athens,
priest of the deified Hadrian and president of the
eighteenth Panhellenic Games (199/200); the inscription
mentions proudly that he was the first `archon' of the
Panhellenic Congress from the city of Thessalonica.
That was one side of the picture, the development of
Greek civilization and the CONSCIOUS CELEBRATION OF ITS
UNITY AND PROSPERITY. In the native populations of the
East it produced mixed feelings, nowhere better
exemplified than the conversation of three Rabbis of the
second century,..."

<F.Millar, "The Roman Empire and its
Neighbours," 2nd ed. (London: Duck-
worth, 1981), pp.205-206>

[Flipper]

Very good post and points...
I've got a book from the Swedish University where they discribe the Panhellinic league. Even before Alexander defeated the Thebans, he was leader of it. When he won the battle of Chaeronia, he let the members of the league to decide what would happen to Thebes, as the rules of the Panhellinic league suggested. Because the Boetians and the Thesprotians were hating the Thebans they made the difference and convinced the league that Thebes should be burned.

I will post the exact translation of the story when I get home.

[Flipper]

By the way...Panhellinion i read now...What I was talking about was the Panhellinic council that existed before Alexanders time and where Macedon was included.

[Ptolemy]

Inscription of a stone found in May 1918 in Thessalonica.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v250/technotut/macedonianpanhellenion.jpg

Even if it is readable and meaningful in Greek here is a better version of it in greek.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v250/technotut/panhellinion2.jpg

It is quite interesting that it talks again about the Panhellenion of Thessalonike.