Another peculiarity of the ancient Greek diplomacy was that they preferred oral messages to written notes; therefore, there is not a large archive of diplomatic correspondence of ancient Greece. There were three kinds of representatives:

• angelos: a messenger used for brief and specific missions
• keryx: a herald
• proxenos: a resident consul but the proxenos were citizens of the city in which they resided, not of the city-state that employed them. If a resident representative was needed in another state, then a resident was given the title of proxenos by the state which he represented. In other words, the proxenos looked after the interests of a foreign state while residing in the state of which he was a citizen.