The core meaning of “peace” now and in antiquity was a lack of strife, and that hasn’t changed. It’s the implications that are different. But a word’s implications, much more than its core meaning, are flexible. To see how, we need only reflect on the modern English word “peace.” Though it usually means coexistence, we still use it to describe the pax romana. It was a peaceful time, just not the typical kind of peace that the word now implies in English.
