The great tradition: The spread of diplomacy in the ancient world

Diplomacy as we understand it to the present day — a sophisticated system for handling affairs of state and negotiating treaties, based on accredited envoys working within a framework of international law and protocol ‐ emerged in the third millennium BCE in the ancient Near East at the same time as the development of writing and urban culture. Transmitted by the great cuneiform civilizations of Babylon and Assyria to Achaemenid Persia and classical Greece and Rome, the heritage of diplomacy continued to flourish in Byzantium, Rome, and Venice. The Renaissance provided the conditions for the spread of a tradition that had existed in many essential aspects for millennia.