Proxenos

A person who acts as an official host-friend and moral intermediary between two communities or cities, permanently bearing mutual obligations toward both parties.

The term originates in the Greek city-state system, where it originally denoted an unofficial ambassador who offered foreigners protection, guidance, and moral care. The Stoics expanded this concept, viewing the proxenos relationship not as mere hospitality but as an expression of rational community (koinōnia logikē), in which both partners incur reciprocal moral obligations to promote one another's virtue. This friendship is not optional or hedonistic, but categorically binding as participation in the universal Logos.