Examinating interstate relations across antiquity, this volume investigates the communicative strategies, lexical nuances, and ideological frameworks embedded in diplomatic discourse within classical Greece and the Byzantine Empire. Through three distinct scholarly essays, the work analyzes how historical narratives constructed ambassadors' speeches and symbolic gestures to fulfill structural and persuasive functions. Francesca Gazzano explores Herodotean diplomacy, illustrating how early communicative models and non-Greek interactions inform archaic interstate dynamics. Domenica Paola Orsi offers a lexical analysis of communication verbs in Xenophon's Hellenica, highlighting the semantic precision required in diplomatic negotiations, requests, and proposals. Finally, Lia Raffaella Cresci investigates twelfth-century Byzantine historical monographs (Comnena, Cinnamus, Choniates), demonstrating how argumentative rhetoric and ceremonial signals served specific imperial ideologies. Collectively, the volume reveals the enduring interplay between rhetoric, terminology, and political ideology in ancient and medieval diplomacy