/ˈpænθiɒn/
[noun] A group of all the gods of a particular religion or culture, or a building built to honour them. It can also refer to a group of the most famous or important people in a particular field.
The Pantheon in Rome was built as a temple to all gods — and it still stands, nearly 2,000 years later, perfectly intact.
The word 'pantheon' begins its life in ancient Greek, where it was formed from two parts: 'pan', meaning 'all', and 'theos', meaning 'god'. Together, they created 'pantheion', which simply meant 'of all gods' or 'a place sacred to all gods'. This root 'theos' is one of the most productive in the English language — it flows through Greek → Latin into words like 'theology' (Greek 'theologia' → Latin 'theologia' → English 'theology'), 'atheist' (Greek 'atheos' → English 'atheist'), and 'theocracy' (Greek 'theokratia' → English 'theocracy'). The prefix 'pan' is equally generous, giving us 'panorama', 'pandemic', and 'panacea', all carrying that sense of totality and completeness.
The most famous bearer of this name is, of course, the great domed temple in Rome, built by the Emperor Hadrian around 125 AD on the site of an earlier structure commissioned by Marcus Agrippa in 27 BC. Agrippa's original building may have been dedicated specifically to the gods who protected the Julian family, but Hadrian's rebuilt version opened its arms to all the deities of Rome. The building's engineering — a concrete dome with a central oculus open to the sky — was so advanced that it remained the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome for over 1,300 years. That open eye in the ceiling, letting in rain and light alike, felt like a conversation between all the gods and the world below.
The word entered Latin directly from Greek as 'Pantheon', where it referred both to the building and to the broader concept of a collective divine assembly. From classical Latin, it passed into Old French as 'panthéon', where it was used in scholarly and religious writing. English borrowed the word from both Latin and French in the 14th century, initially as a term used almost exclusively in discussions of Roman religion and architecture. For several centuries it remained a rather specialist word, found in the books of scholars and historians rather than in everyday conversation.
By the 17th and 18th centuries, however, 'pantheon' had begun to stretch its meaning in a new and interesting direction. The Age of Enlightenment brought a fascination with classical antiquity, and writers began using the word more loosely to describe any gathering of important figures — not just gods. When France built its own grand Panthéon in Paris in 1791 as a mausoleum for distinguished French citizens, the word took a decisive secular turn. Voltaire, Rousseau, and Victor Hugo were all eventually interred there, as though literary genius and civic greatness could be worshipped like divinity. The building made the metaphor physical and permanent.
In modern English, 'pantheon' has fully embraced this double life. It still describes the collection of gods in any religious tradition — we speak of the Greek pantheon, the Norse pantheon, the Hindu pantheon — but it is just as comfortably used to describe the greatest figures in any human endeavour. A footballer might be said to have 'entered the pantheon of the greats', or a writer might be welcomed into 'the pantheon of American literature'. What is remarkable is how little the core idea has changed in over two millennia: whether we are talking about Zeus and Apollo or Babe Ruth and Michael Jordan, a pantheon is always a gathering of those we have decided to treat as more than merely human.