ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the vision of peace in ancient Greece by focussing in particular on the deification of the abstraction, eirn. The Greeks peace was a complicated and multifaceted concept, which changed and developed over time in a variety of sociopolitical, religious, literary, artistic and intellectual contexts. In Athens by the fourth century BC at least Eirn had, acquired the status of an independent goddess honoured by public ceremonies on a national scale. During the Peloponnesian War Aristophanes entertained, but also challenged, his Athenian audience with comedies on the theme of peace. Perhaps surprisingly, the Greek word seems almost an afterthought in the human business of foreign policy making. The Greeks of Homer and Hesiod's time made offerings to the gods and prayed for divine assistance, hoping to be granted the gift of Peace and all her blessings; by the fourth century peace had been appropriated as a political resource, which men now presumed to control and negotiate for themselves.
