Providing a treatment of Panhellenism, this book argues that in archaic and classical Greece Panhellenism was a body of narratives that expressed, defined and limited the community of the Hellenes and gave it political substance.

This is the first book in English to provide a systematic treatment of Panhellenism. The author argues that in archaic and classical Greece Panhellenism was a body of narratives that expressed, defined and limited the community of the Hellenes and gave it political substance. Yet Panhellenic narratives also responded to other needs of the community, in particular serving to locate the Hellenes in time and space. Thus one of the chief Panhellenic narratives, the war against the barbarian, provided the conceptual framework in which Alexander the Great could imagine his Asian campaign.