Ancient panhellenism

This article looks at panhellenism in ancient Greece. For the ideology of the same name in the 20th century, see Modern Panhellenism .

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The ancient Panhellenism was a political idea in ancient Greece , whose followers for an agreement of the Greek city-states, the polis , entered. Among its most important representatives were Isocrates and Aeschines , whose panhellenism was directed primarily against the Persian Achaemenid Empire . Demosthenes represented an anti- Macedonian panhellenism directed against Philip II and his son Alexander .

Panhellenic - that is, all Greek institutions - such as the Olympic Games and the amphiktionie of Delphi are evidence that the Greeks regarded each other as culturally belonging in the pre-classical period. The competition, the so-called agonal principle, also united the Greeks. The demand to correspond to this cultural unity also on a political level was made at the beginning of the 5th century BC. Chr. Current, when it was necessary to confront the great power Persia together.

Even after the Persian Wars, Greek politicians and philosophers appealed - sometimes for idealistic, sometimes for propaganda reasons - to panhellenic feelings in order to end the permanent state of war between the poleis. In the 4th century BC Chr. Therefore combined the idea of Pan-Hellenism with the idea of general peace , the Koine Eirene .

At least since the beginning of the hegemony of Philip II and Alexander the Great over Greece, the panhellenic idea only served as a propaganda instrument of the Macedonian power politics in the fight against Persia.