The Ancient Greek Origin of Why Athens Is Actually Plural

The temple of Hephaestus, arsenic seen from the Ancient Agora, Athens, Greece. Credit: nationalist domain from Wikimedia Commons

A comic happening astir Athens that lone geography, history, and linguistic buffs would announcement is that its precise sanction holds a hint to its origins.

Most of america deliberation of Athens arsenic a single, sprawling, and wonderfully chaotic metropolis with 1 long, continuous story. But the connection Athens is plural. It isn’t Athen, arsenic it is successful German. There’s that tiny -s astatine the end, and it’s not conscionable successful English. The plural signifier appears successful past languages too. This subtle item hides successful plain sight, reminding america that the metropolis we cognize contiguous erstwhile began arsenic a postulation of tiny communities scattered crossed the hills of Attica.

The sanction of Athens successful Ancient Greek

In Ancient Greek, the city’s sanction was written arsenic “Athenai” (Ἀθῆναι), which virtually means “the Athenses.” While that evidently sounds unusual successful English, it made cleanable consciousness astatine the time. Before Athens became the intelligence and governmental bosom of Greece, Attica was a patchwork of tiny villages.

According to myth, the leader Theseus agreed these settlements nether a azygous rule—a process the Greeks called synoecism, meaning “living together.” The plural sanction endured, reflecting not 1 metropolis but a assemblage of many.

Athens wasn’t unsocial successful this regard. Thebes (Θῆβαι) and Mycenae (Μυκῆναι) followed the aforesaid linguistic pattern. Yet Athens outlasted and outshone them all. When the Romans adopted the sanction “Athenae,” the plural signifier traveled with it—slipping into astir European languages and remaining that way.

Theseus was celebrated successful Athens for uniting the city’s communities nether a azygous government. Credit: Egisto Sani, Flickr, CC BY 2.0

From “the Athenses” to Athens

That aged plural signifier is simply a benignant of linguistic fossil, preserved successful languages specified arsenic English, French (Athènes), Spanish (Atenas), and Italian (Atene). It reveals an past clip erstwhile Athens was much of a vicinity web than a azygous capital. Of course, arsenic the centuries rolled on, those villages blended into 1 large metropolis destined to go a powerhouse of democracy, art, and philosophy. The sanction didn’t change, but the meaning softly did.

Modern Greek yet caught up. By the 1800s, erstwhile Greece became autarkic and began reshaping its individuality betwixt its Eastern Roman past and its Ancient Greek ancestors, radical began saying “Athina” instead—the singular form. It acceptable the times, arsenic modern Athens was present a agreed superior that needed a sanction to match. Besides, it simply sounded much earthy successful the evolving bushed of Modern Greek.

What makes it adjacent much absorbing is that “Athina” happens to dependable similar “Athena,” the city’s ain goddess—the aforesaid Athena, who according to legend, won the city’s favour with the acquisition of an olive tree, symbolizing wisdom, peace, and each the different things that Athens gave its pious residents. Thus, adjacent arsenic the grammar changed, the tone of the sanction came afloat circle. Athens and Athena were bound unneurotic again, singular and inseparable.

Language has a singular mode of preserving echoes of the past. It holds connected to aged meanings agelong aft the stories down them person faded. The plural “Athens” that English, French, Spanish, and Italian inactive usage is not an mistake but a hint of memory—a faint echo of the tiny communities Theseus erstwhile united.