Common Peace

Common Peace (Κοινὴ Εἰρήνη, Koinē Eirēnē) was the term used in ancient Greece for a peace treaty that simultaneously declared peace between all the combatants in a war. The concept was invented with the Peace of Antalcidas in 387 BC. Prior to that time, peace treaties in Greece were between two combatants or alliances only and had an expiration date after which either side was free to resume hostilities. According to John Fine, before the advent of the concept of Common Peace, "since peace was seemingly considered only a lull in the more normal condition of war, treaties were always bilateral and usually limited to specified periods of time." An example of such a limited peace is the Thirty Years Peace that concluded the so-called First Peloponnesian War.

The Common Peace was a product of a period of Greek history in which increasingly widespread and destructive warfare had led a number of states to think outside of such limited conceptions of peace. From 395 BC to 387 BC, the inconclusive Corinthian War further exhausted a number of states that had already been severely taxed by the Peloponnesian War. In 387, these states agreed to end the war with a new sort of peace.

The Peace of Antalcidas, also known as the King's Peace because of the strong Persian influence it reflected, contained many of the elements that would characterize later common peaces. First among these was the Persian influence on the terms; by the mid-4th century BC, disunity in Greece has allowed Persia to claim a dominant role in Greek politics. A second element that would be passed on to later peaces was an avowal of the principle of , which stated that all cities should be free and independent. This provision was highly open to interpretation, and another characteristic provision of Common Peaces provided for how it would be interpreted. The Spartans were appointed as guardians (prostatai) of the peace, with the power to interpret and enforce its provisions. This provision amounted to de facto recognition of Sparta's hegemony in Greece, and later treaties would include similar enforcement mechanisms.

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