Eirene

Not to be confused with Aristophanes’ comedy Peace.

Eirene (Peace) was the Greek goddess and personification of peace, one of the three Horae, the daughters of Zeus and Themis. Her sisters were Eunomia (Order) and Dike (Justice). The Athenians gave her statues and an altar, and her best-known image showed her carrying the child Plutus, Wealth, in her arms. Her Roman counterpart is Pax.

Family

Hesiod says that Zeus married Themis, who bore the Horae, Eunomia, Dike and “blooming Eirene,” who watch over the works of mortal men. She also bore the Moirai, the Fates, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, to whom Zeus gave the greatest honour (Hesiod, Theogony 901–906). Pindar likewise names Eunomia, Dike and Eirene as the golden daughters of wise Themis, dwelling in Corinth, the steady foundation of cities, who give wealth to men (Pindar, Olympian 13.6–8). The sources give her no consort or children.

Role

In Hesiod, Eirene belongs to the cities that treat strangers and citizens justly: their people flourish, and “Peace, nurse of the young, is abroad in the land,” so that Zeus never marks out cruel war for them (Hesiod, Works and Days 225–229). Pindar joins her with Eunomia and Dike as the guardians of a city’s stability (Olympian 13.6–8). Euripides gives her the same two titles in the Bacchae, where the chorus says that Dionysus delights in feasts and loves Eirene, the giver of wealth and goddess who nurses the young (Euripides, Bacchae 417–420). Peace was thus the companion of good order and justice, and the source of prosperity.

Worship and Statues at Athens

The Athenians honoured Eirene with an altar. According to the account Plutarch reports, after Cimon’s victories over the Persians and the treaty said to have been made through the ambassador Callias, the Athenians built an altar of Peace and gave Callias distinguished honours (Plutarch, Cimon 13.6).

Pausanias saw two images of Eirene in Athens. One stood among the statues of the gods near the monument of the eponymous heroes and showed Eirene carrying the boy Plutus (Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.8.2). The other stood in the Prytaneum, the town hall, beside a figure of Hestia (Pausanias 1.18.3). Pausanias praises the idea of Cephisodotus, who made the image of Peace for the Athenians with Wealth in her arms, so that prosperity appears as the child of peace (Pausanias 9.16.2). At Thebes the Thebans had a similar statue of Fortune with Wealth in her arms by Xenophon the Athenian and Callistonicus (Pausanias 9.16.2).

Eirene in Rome

The Romans knew the goddess as Pax. Ovid, in the Fasti, addresses her at her altar and asks her, crowned with laurel from Actium, to remain gentle through the whole world, and says that as long as there are no enemies there will be no cause for triumph (Ovid, Fasti 1.709–714).

Eirene Sources

Hesiod, Theogony 901–906; Hesiod, Works and Days 225–229; Pindar, Olympian 13.6–8; Euripides, Bacchae 417–420; Plutarch, Cimon 13.6; Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.8.2, 1.18.3, 9.16.2; Ovid, Fasti 1.709–714.

See Also: Zeus, Themis, Horae, Eunomia, Dike, Plutus, Hestia, Moirai