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The Man Struck Blind on the Road to Damascus

After Stephen, a follower of Jesus, is killed, this man takes the lead in hunting down Jesus’ followers. He goes into one house after another, drags men and women out, and throws them into prison.

Many of the disciples flee to other cities and begin to declare the good news there. This Pharisee, a strict religious teacher, is not happy about that. So he gets letters from the high priest. Those letters give him the power to arrest anyone who follows Jesus and bring them back to Jerusalem in chains.

What is his name? Who is this man?

His name is Saul.

He is now on his way to Damascus with his letters to round up more disciples of Jesus. Suddenly a light from the sky flashes around him, and Saul falls to the ground.

A voice speaks: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

Saul answers with a question of his own: “Who are you, Lord?”

“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”

Saul gets up from the ground. His eyes are open, but he cannot see. The men with him heard the voice, but they saw no one. They take him by the hand and lead him into Damascus.

For three days, Saul sits in the dark. He does not eat, and he does not drink. (Adapted from Acts 9:1 to 9, World English Bible)

How did a man so certain end up blind and helpless on that road? This is the story of how a man went from Saul to Paul. In this blog post, you will meet the boy from Tarsus, the student in Jerusalem, and the man who watched Stephen die. You will also see what happened when his sight returned, and you will find where to read every part for yourself.

To answer that question, let us go back to the beginning. Shall we?

 Saul of Tarsus

Long before the road, there was a city Saul was born in. Tarsus. A busy port city in Cilicia, in what is now southern Turkey. He later described it as no small city (Acts 21:39).

Tarsus was a Greek speaking city of schools and learning. Ancient writers praised its teachers, and some ranked its schools alongside those of Athens and Alexandria.

Does that city sound familiar? If you read Blog 19, it should. In 333 BC, Alexander the Great passed through Tarsus. He swam in the icy Cydnus River, fell gravely ill, and nearly died. More than three centuries later, a boy named Saul grew up near that same river.

The Greek world Alexander left behind was the world Saul knew. Greek was the common language, and Greek ideas filled the streets.

Yet Saul was not only a city boy from a Greek town. His family was Jewish, and he later called himself a Hebrew of Hebrews from the tribe of Benjamin (Philippians 3:5). He may have been named after Israel’s first king, who came from that same tribe. On top of that, he was born a Roman citizen (Acts 22:28). In one man, three worlds met: Hebrew, Greek, and Roman.

A Student in Jerusalem

Tarsus was his birthplace, but Jerusalem shaped him. Saul grew up there and studied under Gamaliel, a respected teacher of the law (Acts 22:3). Gamaliel was a Pharisee, and the people honored him (Acts 5:34).

Saul learned fast. He became a Pharisee himself and burned with zeal for the traditions of his fathers (Philippians 3:5 to 6). In other words, he did not just study his faith. He defended it with everything he had.

That zeal, however, took a very dark turn. When a new group of people began following Jesus, Saul saw them as a danger. So he set out to stop them. To see how far it went, we first need to meet the man whose death changed everything.

Who Was Stephen?

Stephen was a follower of Jesus, also called a disciple. He was known for his faith and his wisdom.

Some men argued with him, but they could not win. As a result, they stirred up the people and brought in false witnesses, who said he spoke against the temple and the law.

Stephen was seized and taken before the Sanhedrin, the highest court of the Jewish people (Acts 6:8 to 14).

As he stood there, everyone sitting in the council looked at him and saw that his face looked like the face of an angel (Acts 6:15).

According to Jewish tradition, the Sanhedrin was made up of 71 men.

That count is 70 members plus the high priest, who led the court.

The book of Acts does not give a number, so this comes from Jewish writings outside the Bible.

The high priest asked Stephen one question: “Are these things so?” (Acts 7:1).

Stephen answered with a long speech that retold Israel’s history (Acts 7:2 to 53). He spoke of Abraham, Joseph, and Moses.

His point was that God’s people had often turned against the ones God sent to save them.

Joseph’s brothers sold him. Israel pushed Moses aside. Stephen also said that God does not live in buildings made by human hands.

Then he told the council plainly that they were doing the same thing their fathers had done (Acts 7:51 to 53). That is when the council grew furious.

Saul Watched Stephen Die

One event marks the turning point.

Stephen was dragged out of Jerusalem and stoned to death.

The men who threw the stones laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul (Acts 7:58).

Even as the stones struck him, Stephen prayed for the men who were killing him (Acts 7:59 to 60).

Saul was there, and he approved (Acts 8:1).

Ananias and the Return of Sight

Meanwhile, in Damascus, a follower of Jesus named Ananias received a message. He was to go to a house on Straight Street and ask for Saul of Tarsus (Acts 9:11).

Ananias was afraid. He had heard how much harm Saul had done to believers. However, he was told that Saul was a chosen man, and so he went (Acts 9:13 to 15).

Picture that walk. Ananias is about to meet the man who came to arrest people like him.

He laid his hands on Saul and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord, who appeared to you on the road by which you came, has sent me, that you may receive your sight, and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Right away, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see (Acts 9:17 to 18).

Notice the very first word Saul heard from a believer: “Brother.”

Saul was then baptized, ate, and regained his strength. After several days with the disciples in Damascus, he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God (Acts 9:18 to 20). The hunter had become a follower.

Was the Change From Saul to Paul Really a New Name?

Here is a detail many readers miss. The Bible never says his name changed on the road to Damascus.

Acts first calls him “Saul, who is also called Paul” while he is on the island of Cyprus (Acts 13:9). From that point on, Luke, the traditional writer of Acts, simply calls him Paul.

Saul was his Hebrew name. Paul comes from the Latin name Paulus. Many scholars think he carried both names from childhood, since he was a Jew and a Roman citizen.

So the real change from Saul to Paul was not a new name. It was a new purpose. The man who once chased believers now traveled the Greek and Roman world to tell people about Jesus.

From Hating Men and Women to a God Fearing, Peaceable Man

Look at the whole journey. Saul once persecuted followers of Jesus all the way to the death. Later he said it himself, that he was “binding and delivering into prisons both men and women” (Acts 22:4). He was full of hatred toward them.

Yet he ended as a God fearing, peaceable man. Years later, he wrote, “If it is possible, as much as it is up to you, be at peace with all men” (Romans 12:18).

That is the full journey from Saul to Paul.

Discover Where the Sources Are, So You Can Read for Yourself

You stood on the road to Damascus and saw a man struck blind. Then you went back to Tarsus, the city Alexander once visited. From there, you followed Saul to Jerusalem, to Stephen and the Sanhedrin, and to the road again. At the end, you saw that the change from Saul to Paul was about purpose, not just a name. You also watched him go from hatred to peace.

His story does not end in Damascus. Years later, he would walk into Athens, the city of Socrates and Plato from Blog 17. In a coming blog post, we will follow him there.

Read for yourself references:

On Saul and Paul:

Wikipedia, “Paul the Apostle”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Apostle

 Britannica, “Saint Paul the Apostle”: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Paul-the-Apostle

On the Sanhedrin:

Britannica, “Sanhedrin”: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sanhedrin

Mishnah, Sanhedrin 1:6, for the tradition of 71 judges. Free on Sefaria.

On Tarsus and Alexander:

World History Encyclopedia, “Tarsus”: https://www.worldhistory.org/Tarsus

1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Tarsus,” on Wikisource: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Tarsus

Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander, Book 2, on Alexander’s illness at Tarsus. Free on Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46976

Don’t just take my word for it, I encourage you to open the accounts and read for yourself.

Greek Words for This Journey

English	Greek	Sounds Like
Light	Φως	fos
Voice	Φωνή	fo-NEE
Blind	Τυφλός	tee-FLOS
Brother	Αδελφός	a-thel-FOS
Teacher	Δάσκαλος	THA-ska-los
Road	Δρόμος	THRO-mos

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Alexander

Let us start at the beginning. How many world powers came before Greece, and how long did each one last? Historians count Egypt as the first world power to rule over this part of the world.

1. Egypt: 1570 to 1070 BC, about 500 years

2. Assyria: 911 to 609 BC, about 302 years

3. Babylon: 612 to 539 BC, about 73 years, counting from the fall of Nineveh

4. Medo-Persia: 539 to 331 BC, about 208 years

5. Greece: 336 to 30 BC, about 306 years

These are the dates historians give. Read the sources below and check them for yourself.

12 Steps to a World Power

1. 336 BC: Philip is killed, and Alexander becomes king at 20.

2. 335 BC: A revolt breaks out in Greece, and Alexander destroys Thebes as a warning.

3. 334 BC: He crosses into Asia and wins at the Granicus.

4. 333 BC: King Darius of Persia is defeated at Issus.

5. 332 BC: He takes the island city of Tyre after a seven-month siege.

6. 332 to 331 BC: Egypt surrenders without a fight, and he founds Alexandria.

7. 331 BC: He wins the decisive Battle of Gaugamela.

8. 330 BC: Persepolis burns, and Darius is killed by one of his own governors.

9. 329 to 327 BC: He conquers Bactria and Sogdiana in Central Asia.

10. 326 BC: He defeats King Porus in India at the Hydaspes.

11. 326 BC: His tired army refuses to go farther, and he turns back.

12. 323 BC: He dies in Babylon at 32.

Where It All Began

Have you ever wondered how the Grecian world power began? Not with an army or a map. It began with a child, born in a place most people at that time did not think much about. This is the story of the boy from Pella, Alexander, before he was ‘the Great’. His father, Philip II, ruled a small kingdom at the northern edge of the Greek world. His mother, Olympias, came from Epirus and claimed to be descended from Achilles.

A world power came from this leader, and it all started here. In this blog post, you will see what his father built, follow the conquests, and find out what happened after he died at 32. You will also discover a second Pella and learn where to check every claim for yourself.

Pella was the capital of ancient Macedonia, roughly 24 miles northwest of Thessaloniki. Alexander was born there in July of 356 BC. The excavated houses of Pella had mosaic floors made of tiny pebbles, including a lion hunt scene. Today, visitors can see the site and its museum.

One story from his boyhood shows how he thought. A wild horse named Bucephalus threw every rider who tried to mount him. Young Alexander noticed that the horse was afraid of its own shadow. He turned it to face the sun, and the horse calmed down. His father was so proud that he reportedly said Macedonia was too small for such a son.

According to the Greek writer Plutarch, his father was so proud that he said Macedonia was too small for such a son.

A Boyhood in Pella

Then came school. At about age 13, around 343 B.C.E., Alexander began lessons with the philosopher Aristotle near the town of Mieza.

If you read Blog 17, you already met that teacher. Aristotle is said to have given Alexander an annotated copy of the Iliad, and Alexander carried it on his campaigns.That was the boy from Pella at 13, already learning from one of history’s greatest minds.

See what his father, Philip II, built before him

But the boy from Pella did not come from nowhere. His father had been busy. Philip inherited a kingdom on the verge of collapse, then turned its army into a disciplined force. His foot soldiers carried a pike about twenty feet long, called the Sarissa. Philip reformed the cavalry too.

Alexander showed his own ability early. In 340 BC, at only 16, he ruled Macedonia as regent while Philip besieged the city of Byzantium.

Two years later, in August of 338 BC, that new army beat Athens and Thebes at the Battle of Chaeronea. Alexander was 18 years old, and he led the cavalry. Afterward, Philip formed the League of Corinth, an alliance of Greek states. Then he planned a war against Persia, the same empire we met in Blog 18.

However, Philip never made it. In fact, in 336 BC, his own bodyguard, Pausanias, killed him at his daughter’s wedding feast. Some rumors blamed the Persian king. Others blamed Alexander’s mother. Nobody knows for sure. Either way, Alexander became king at 20.

Follow the conquests from Persia to India

Alexander wasted no time. In 335 BC, he crushed a revolt in Greece and destroyed the city of Thebes as a warning to the other city-states.

In 334 BC, by 21, the boy from Pella had already crossed into Asia with about 37,000 troops and won at the Granicus River. He nearly died in a cavalry duel during that fight. The next year, in 333 BC, he defeated King Darius of Persia at Issus.

Next came the siege of Tyre in 332 BC. It lasted seven months, and many consider it his greatest military achievement. From there, Egypt surrendered without a fight, and around 331 BC he founded the city of Alexandria.

On October 1, 331 BC, at the age of 25, he broke the main Persian army at Gaugamela, and King Darius fled. In 330 BC, Persepolis burned. One account says it was revenge for the burning of the Acropolis in Athens 150 years earlier. That links straight back to the Persians who burned Athens in Blog 18. Later that year, one of Darius’s own governors, Bessus, killed him. From 329 to 327 BC, Alexander pushed on into Bactria and Sogdiana in Central Asia.

The March into India

Then he marched to India. In 326 BC, at 29, he fought King Porus and his war elephants at the Hydaspes River. He crossed the river in pouring rain to attack, and he won. Then he spared Porus and let him keep ruling.

Soon after the battle, his beloved horse Bucephalus died. Some ancient writers say from wounds, and others say from old age. Alexander was so grieved that he founded a new city on the bank of the Hydaspes and named it Bucephala, in memory of his horse.

But his army had reached its limit. At the Hyphasis River, his tired soldiers refused to march any farther east. Historians still debate whether to call it a mutiny. Whatever the word, Alexander turned back.

Find out what happened after he died at 32

In June of 323 BC, Alexander died in Babylon at the age of 32. A fever gripped him for about ten days. What killed him? Nobody knows for sure, and people have suggested many causes. Here are five of the leading theories:

– **Malaria.** This is the traditional suspect, since Babylon sat near marshland. Critics say the mosquitoes that carry malaria do not thrive in the dry lands of central Iraq.

– **Typhoid fever.** This illness spreads through contaminated food or water. Critics point out that no record shows a typhoid outbreak in Babylon at that time.

– **Poison.** Rumors of poison spread right away. In 2014, toxicologists Leo Schep and Pat Wheatley suggested wine made from the white hellebore plant. The ancient writer Plutarch noted that most writers thought the poison story was made up.

– **Necrotising pancreatitis.** Dr. Thomas Gerasimides, an emeritus professor of medicine at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, proposed this cause. Alexander fell ill after a heavy round of drinking.

– **Guillain-Barré syndrome.** In 2018, Dr. Katherine Hall of the University of Otago proposed this rare condition, in which the body’s immune system attacks the nerves and causes paralysis. It could explain why Plutarch says his body showed no decay for six days. It also means he may have been alive when he was declared dead.

Alexander had ruled for only 13 years. In that short time, the boy from Pella had conquered most of the known world. When his generals asked who should inherit the empire, the historian Diodorus reports that Alexander answered, “to the strongest.” Historians debate whether he really said it.

The Empire Divided

Either way, the empire fell apart. His generals fought each other for about 40 years. After the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC, the empire was divided among his four top generals:

– Cassander took Macedonia and most of Greece.

– Lysimachus took much of present day Turkey.

– Seleucus took Iran, Iraq, Syria, and parts of Central Asia.

– Ptolemy took Egypt.

In time, three lasting kingdoms remained: Ptolemaic Egypt, the Seleucid Empire, and Antigonid Macedon.

Bible readers may recall Daniel chapter 8, which speaks of a Greek king and four kingdoms that followed him. Open any Bible and read it for yourself.

The empire did not last as one kingdom, but Greek culture spread across all of it. Greek became the common language of the region. That is one reason the Christian Greek Scriptures were written in Greek. We will see that Greek world again in our next blog post, when Paul steps into Athens.

Discover a second Pella, and its link to first century Christians

The boy from Pella died in Babylon, but the world he built did not vanish with him. Greek settlers followed in his wake and carried his birthplace with them. In the Jordan Valley, they gave a city the name Pella, most likely to honor where he was born. The sources are not sure exactly when.

Centuries later, that second Pella became a place of safety. Jesus had warned his disciples that when they saw Jerusalem surrounded by armies, they should flee. Here are his words:

“When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is at hand. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let those who are in the middle of her depart. Let those who are in the surrounding countryside not enter into her. For these are days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who nurse infants in those days! For there will be great distress in the land, and wrath to this people. They will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” Luke 21:20-24, World English Bible

Matthew’s Gospel records this same warning: “When, therefore, you see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.” Matthew 24:15-16, World English Bible

The Roman Withdrawal

That autumn, in 66 C.E., the Jews of Judea were in revolt against Rome. The Roman governor of Syria, Cestius Gallus, marched on Jerusalem. His army reached the city and pushed into the suburbs. Then, for reasons that remain unclear, he pulled back. The historian Josephus, who witnessed the war, believed Cestius would have taken the city with a little more time.

Josephus adds that many prominent citizens then left Jerusalem, like passengers abandoning a ship about to sink. He does not mention the Christians, but his account shows that the way out was open.

The Christians who saw the Roman army leave took Jesus’ warning seriously. They began leaving Jerusalem. The fourth century church historian Eusebius wrote that a revelation told the church in Jerusalem to move to Pella before the war. The later writer Epiphanius records the same tradition.

Not every historian agrees this happened exactly as described, but archaeologists have long searched Pella itself for evidence of it, and the nineteenth century historian Philip Schaff wrote plainly that “the Christians of Jerusalem, remembering the Lord’s admonition, forsook the doomed city in good time and fled to the town of Pella.”

Why They Chose Pella

Why Pella? It sat across the Jordan River, in the region called the Decapolis, away from the fighting in Judea. That made it one of the safer places within reach of Jerusalem.

Within a few years, the Romans returned. Titus surrounded Jerusalem near Passover in 70 C.E., trapping residents and pilgrims alike. Josephus reported that more than a million people died, though many historians think his numbers are too high. The Christians who had listened were already safe across the Jordan.

I have never stood in either Pella, but the second one stays with me. For the early Christians who reached it, Pella meant life. They took the warning seriously, and their lives were spared.

The sources are listed below

You met the boy from Pella and followed him into becoming Alexander the Great. His father’s army and alliances made it possible. You followed the conquests from Persia to India, and learned what happened after he died at 32. A second Pella waited at the end.

A world power came from a boy born in Pella. And a city that borrowed the name of his birthplace gave shelter to people who took the warning seriously.

Read for yourself references:

On the flight to Pella:

– Wikipedia, “Flight to Pella,” a neutral overview of the tradition and the scholarly debate over it

– Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Volume 1, section 39, on the Christian Classics Ethereal Library

– Stephen Bourke, “The Christian Flight to Pella: True or Tale?” Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2013

– Craig Koester, “The Origin and Significance of the Flight to Pella Tradition,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 51 (1989): 90-106, the key scholarly paper on the debate.

– Josephus, The Jewish War, Whiston translation. Book 2, chapter 19, sections 1 to 9 tell of Cestius Gallus’s march on Jerusalem, his siege, and his retreat. Book 2, chapter 20, section 1 tells of the prominent citizens who left the city afterward.

– Eusebius, Church History, Book 3, chapter 5, section 3, for the flight to Pella. Free here

– Luke 21:20-24 and Matthew 24:15-16 in the World English Bible, a free, public domain translation.

On Alexander:

– Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander, the most complete account of the campaigns. Free on Project Gutenberg

– Plutarch, Life of Alexander, Chapter 61 tells of Bucephalus and the city of Bucephala.

– Britannica, Pella

– Britannica, “How Did Alexander the Great Really Die?“

– The Collector, “How Did Alexander the Great Die?“

– History News Network, on the white hellebore theory

– The Greek News Agenda, on the pancreatitis theory

On the dates of the world powers:

– World History Encyclopedia, New Kingdom of Egypt

– World History Encyclopedia, Neo-Assyrian Empire timeline

– Livius, Battle of Ipsus

– World History Encyclopedia, Hyphasis Mutiny

Do not take my word for it. I encourage you, to open the accounts and read for yourself.

Greek Words for This Journey

English	Greek	Sounds Like
King	Βασιλιάς	va-see-LYAS
Kingdom	Βασίλειο	va-SEE-lee-o
Horse	Άλογο	A-lo-go
Army	Στρατός	stra-TOS
Battle	Μάχη	MA-hee
Alexander the Great	Μέγας Αλέξανδρος	ME-gas a-LEK-san-dros
Pella	Πέλλα	PEL-la

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From Myth Into History

We left Athens standing at the edge of legend, a city named after a goddess, a hero who never quite came home the same. But at some point, myth gives way to something you can actually stand inside and touch. That is where this story picks up, with the Persian Wars and the rise of Pericles.

Have you ever stood somewhere and felt like you were standing on top of a history, layers of it, stacked under your feet without you even realizing? That is Athens.

The Athens we walked through was not only built on stories about gods. It was built by real people, making real decisions, in a city that had survived something that very nearly erased it.

The Wars That Almost Ended Athens

Twice, Persia came to Greece

The first time, in 490 BC, the Persian army landed at Marathon, a plain roughly 25 miles northeast of Athens. The Athenians, badly outnumbered, marched out to meet them anyway rather than wait behind their walls. They won, decisively, and legend says a runner carried news of the victory back to Athens on foot, collapsing after delivering the message. Whether that particular story is true or not, it gave the modern marathon its name and its distance.

Ever run a 5K and felt like your legs might give out? Now imagine running 26 miles in armor, after a battle, just to deliver one sentence.

Ten years later, Persia came back, this time with a force large enough that Athens itself could not be held. The city was evacuated. As a result, its people watched from ships and nearby islands as Athens burned.

But the war was not over. At Salamis, in the narrow straits near the city, the outnumbered Greek navy lured the massive Persian fleet into tight waters. There, its size became a disadvantage instead of a strength. The Greek ships, smaller and faster, tore the Persian fleet apart. It was one of the most consequential naval battles in ancient history, and it broke Persia’s momentum for good.

Athens had been burned to the ground and had beaten back an empire anyway.

Pericles and the City Rebuilt

Out of that survival came something unexpected: a golden age.

What would you do with a city that had just watched itself burn? Most people would rebuild the walls first. Athens rebuilt its mind.

Pericles, an Athenian statesman, rose to prominence in the decades after the wars and became the dominant voice in the city for nearly 30 years. Under his leadership, Athens did not just rebuild, it transformed.

This was the Athens that built the Parthenon we walked past in the last post. It was funded in part by tribute from other Greek city-states that had banded together against Persia and never quite stopped paying afterward.

It was the Athens of great tragedians writing plays still performed today. It was Athens where philosophy, as we had come to recognize, started to take shape in public squares and courtyards.

Pericles himself gave a speech, recorded by the historian Thucydides, honoring Athenian soldiers who had died in battle. In it, he described something Athens was unusually proud of: a system of government where power did not belong to one family or one class. At least among free male citizens, it belonged to the people themselves.

Who Was Pericles: The Statesman and General

A statesman is more than just a politician. It is someone who leads with vision, who cares about the long term health of their city, not just winning the next vote.

Pericles was exactly that. He was elected as a general almost every single year for nearly three decades, and the people of Athens trusted him again and again with that kind of power.

He earned that trust.

Under his leadership, Athens became the cultural capital of the entire region.

Artists, philosophers, and playwrights all gathered there, drawn to a city that valued ideas as much as it valued strength.

Pericles pushed for paid public service, so ordinary citizens, not just the wealthy, could serve on juries and hold office. As a result, that single decision opened the door for regular people to actually shape the laws they lived under.

Athens did not just follow the trends of the ancient world. Under Pericles, it set them.

Funding a Golden Age

Much of that cultural flourishing had a price tag, and Pericles found a controversial way to pay it.

Athens led an alliance called the Delian League, originally formed so member city-states could pool resources for mutual defense against Persia. Instead, Pericles redirected a large share of that shared treasury toward building projects in Athens itself, the Parthenon among them.

Some of Athens’ allies were furious. They felt their contributions had been quietly repurposed into monuments for a city that was not even theirs.

Pericles defended the choice, arguing that Athens had already done its part defending the region, and that beauty and permanence were worth investing in too.

Whether that reasoning was a noble vision or a convenient justification, it is still debated by historians today.

Either way, without that decision, the Parthenon as we know it might never have existed.

Democracy Born in the Agora

That system had a name: demokratia. Rule by the people.

It was not born in a palace or a temple.

It was born in the Agora, the open marketplace and civic square at the heart of Athens. That is the same place where the Temple of Hephaestus, the Theseion we mentioned back in Blog 16, still stands almost perfectly intact today.

Picture your local farmers market, but instead of buying tomatoes, the people around you are voting on actual laws. That was Tuesday in ancient Athens.

In the Agora, citizens gathered to vote directly on laws, debate policy, and even vote to exile a citizen they felt had grown too powerful, a practice called ostracism.

The Pottery Ballot

Here is the detail that stops most people cold: the ballots for ostracism were not paper, or wood, or anything official-looking at all.

They were broken pieces of old pottery, whatever was lying around. Then, citizens would scratch the name of the person they wanted gone right into the shard, and drop it in a pile.

If enough shards named the same person, that person had ten days to leave the city, for ten years. No trial, no appeal, just enough broken pottery with the same name on it.

Imagine your neighbors deciding, over a stack of broken plates, that you had to leave your own hometown for a decade.

It excluded women, enslaved people, and non-citizens entirely, and it was messy, loud, and often unfair by modern standards.

But it was also something genuinely new: the idea that ordinary people, gathered together, could govern themselves.

Standing in that same square today, it is strange to think that the word so many modern governments still claim for themselves started right there. It began in a crowded marketplace, in a city that had just watched itself burn.

When the Golden Age Began to Crack

The same confidence and ambition that built the Parthenon also pulled Athens into war.

Sparta, watching Athens grow wealthier and more powerful through the Delian League, saw a rival it could no longer ignore.

In 431 BC, tensions boiled over into full scale conflict, the Peloponnesian War, a war that would drag on for nearly three decades and reshape Greece for good.

Pericles did not live to see how it ended. Early in the war, a devastating plague swept through Athens, packed tightly behind the very walls Pericles had convinced citizens to retreat inside for safety.

He died from it in 429 BC, just two years into a war he had helped bring about.

There is a hard irony in that. The same leader who funded Athens’ golden age, its temples, its art, its democracy in the Agora, also steered the city into war. That same war would eventually unravel much of what he had built.

Eventually, Athens would go on to lose the Peloponnesian War decades later, and with that loss, its golden age never fully returned.

Closing Thought

Standing in the Agora today, it is hard to imagine that this quiet, sun-worn square once held the full weight of a civilization deciding its own fate.

Athens survived Persia, then rebuilt itself into something the world had never quite seen before. It became a city where ordinary citizens voted on their own laws, where art and philosophy were not luxuries but a way of life. A broken piece of pottery could even send a powerful man into exile.

Pericles stood at the center of all of it, the statesman who helped Athens become that kind of place. He was also the same leader whose ambitions helped set in motion the war that would eventually bring it all crashing down.

Greatness and downfall, it turns out, often grow from the very same roots. Pride.

That stack of broken pottery ballots is long gone now. But the idea behind it, that ordinary people deserve a say in their own future, never really left. It is still here, in every vote cast, every voice raised, every citizen who shows up believing their say matters.

One Last Memory

I remember stopping in the Plaka to eat that same trip, not thinking about pride or empires or broken pottery ballots.

I was thinking about my eyes, which had turned into a mess of thick, yellow, gooey pink eye so bad my spouse took me to a doctor the next day.

We had just come from the Temple of Hephaestus, where statue after statue stood in white marble or stone, most of them missing their noses, worn away by centuries of time and weather.

Ancient Athens fell because of the weight of its own greatness. I was just trying to make it through lunch with a straight face.

Somehow, standing in a place with that much history, even that small, uncomfortable moment felt like it belonged there too, proof that real life, messy and unglamorous, has always walked right alongside the myths.

Greek words for this journey:

English	Greek	Sounds Like
War	Πόλεμος	PO-le-mos
Victory	Νίκη	NEE-ki
Democracy	Δημοκρατία	thi-mo-kra-TEE-a
People	Λαός	la-OS
Citizen	Πολίτης	po-LEE-tis
Vote	Ψήφος	PSEE-fos

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Athens wasn’t just something we saw after dark. My family and I also took time to explore it during the day, and one of those daytime trips took us to the Acropolis, the same ground where the great minds of Athens once walked and taught. I remember standing there, looking out over the whole city below us. Rows and rows of small concrete apartment buildings seemed to jut out of the ground and hills in every direction, packed close together as far as I could see. The sun was hitting their windows just right, and for a moment, the whole city looked like it was covered in tiny gems.

Right behind us stood the Parthenon, the great temple built for the goddess Athena, rising above everything like it had been watching over Athens for thousands of years. The Greeks didn’t just build beautiful temples here. They built ideas that still shape how we think today.

Just a short walk from that same hill, men like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle spent their days asking questions, teaching students, and arguing about truth, justice, and how to live a good life. Athens even sentenced one of them to death for it.

These are the stories of the great minds of Athens… the teachers whose classrooms had no walls, and whose lessons never really ended.

Socrates: The Man Who Asked Too Many Questions

Socrates never wrote a single book. Everything we know about him comes from his students, especially Plato. He spent his days walking through the streets of Athens, stopping people in the market or outside the temples, and asking them questions. Simple ones at first. What is justice? Is courage something you’re born with? What does it mean to be good?

The questions never stayed simple for long. Socrates had a way of leading people through their own answers until they realized they didn’t actually know what they thought they knew. This became known as the Socratic method, and teachers still use it today.

Not everyone appreciated being questioned in public. Some of Athens’ leaders saw him as a troublemaker, someone who stirred up doubt in young minds and disrespected the old ways. In 399 BC, Athens put Socrates on trial and sentenced him to death. Athens gave him the choice to escape, but he refused. He believed that living by his principles mattered more than living at all.

Plato: The Student Who Built a School

Plato was one of Socrates’ students, and he never forgot what he learned from him. After his teacher’s death, Plato wanted to make sure those ideas would live on, so he opened a school in Athens called the Academy. Many consider it the first university in the Western world.

At the Academy, Plato taught students to think deeply about big questions. What is a perfect society? What is real, and what only looks real? He wrote his ideas down as conversations, often putting Socrates himself in the role of the teacher within the pages. That’s part of why we know so much about Socrates today. Plato kept his voice alive in writing.

Aristotle: The Student Who Taught a King

One of Plato’s own students at the Academy was a young man named Aristotle. He spent nearly twenty years there, studying and eventually teaching alongside Plato. But Aristotle didn’t just want to talk about ideas. He wanted to study the world itself, from plants and animals to politics and the stars.

Aristotle eventually left Athens to take on a very different kind of student. He became the personal teacher of a young prince named Alexander, who would grow up to conquer much of the known world. We’ll get into that story in the next post. For now, it’s worth pausing on this one thread. A teacher taught a student, who taught another student, who taught a future king. Ideas passed hand to hand, and Athens was the place where it all began.

Solon: The Man Who Gave Power to the People

Before Socrates, before Plato, before Aristotle, there was Solon. He lived more than a hundred years earlier, and in many ways, he set the stage for everything that came after him.

Athens was struggling in his time. Wealthy families held all the power, and many ordinary citizens fell into deep debt, with some families even selling their own children into slavery just to survive. Athens asked Solon to fix the laws. Instead of protecting the wealthy, he canceled debts, freed the families who had fallen into slavery over debt, and gave ordinary citizens a voice in how the city was run.

Historians often point to Solon’s reforms as the first real steps toward democracy. He didn’t create a perfect system, and he knew it. But he opened a door that Athens never fully closed again.

Practical Greek for Learning and Wisdom

Here are a few practical Greek phrases connected to this post, if you want to carry a little bit of Athens’ love for learning with you.

Σοφία (Sophia) meaning wisdom

Ερώτηση (Erotisi) meaning question

Μαθητής (Mathitis) meaning student

Δάσκαλος (Daskalos) meaning teacher

Ελευθερία (Eleftheria) meaning freedom

The Legacy of Athens’ Great Minds

Standing on that hill above Athens, looking out over those sun soaked rooftops, it’s hard to imagine that the streets below once held the great minds of Athens deep in conversation, working through some of the most important ideas in human history. Socrates asking questions in the marketplace. Plato writing them down for the world to keep. Aristotle carrying them forward to teach a future king. And Solon, generations earlier, giving ordinary people a reason to believe their voice mattered.

Athens didn’t just build temples that still stand today. It built ways of thinking that still stand too.

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The Arrival

Welcome back to this Athens Greece travel blog, picking up right where we left off leaving Thessaloniki. Our Olympic Airways flight touched down in Athens around 10:30 on a Tuesday morning, at Ellinikon International Airport, also known as Hellenikon. The village of Ellinikon gave the airport its name, and that village is now a coastal suburb south of the city. Our taxi dropped us in downtown Athens, and that’s where my Greek lessons started in earnest.

A Lesson in Dialects

My instructor began at once telling me about the dialects of Greece. Who knew there had been more than one? I certainly didn’t.

Attic was spoken in Athens itself, the dialect that shifted many alpha sounds to eta sounds, and the one used for the great philosophy and drama Athens became known for. Ionic developed along the coast of Asia Minor, the Cycladic islands, and Euboea, closely related to Attic. Doric belonged to the Spartans of Sparti, as well as Crete, parts of the Aegean islands like Rhodes, and even parts of southern Italy. This dialect held onto the long a sound, so the word for mother stayed mater instead of becoming meter as it did in Attic. Meanwhile, Aeolic took root in Boeotia near Athens, in Thessaly, and on the island of Lesbos off the coast of Asia Minor.

More on that later. By then it was 11:45, the sun was climbing, and all we wanted was something cold to drink and a place to stay for the week.

The Heat, the Wine, and a Scare

By Thursday we knew it was too hot to be out between 2:00 and 5:00. We started taking naps too, and they were refreshing. We met some of his friends in the park, and they were drinking wine instead of water. That was a question I held onto and tucked away, because I needed to know what was wrong with the water.

On our way back to the hotel, I was as drunk as I could be. I hadn’t had the chance to ask my instructor about the water yet, so every time they passed him a glass of wine, I drank it instead. He had already survived two serious heart attacks, and I feared for his life. He was eating pâté and hot peppers and drinking wine, and the heat outside made all of it worse. I knew this wasn’t something he was supposed to do, and it frightened me. My Greek was still very limited, and I had a young child to care for, along with myself and him.

An Athens Greece Travel Blog Seen by Streetlight

The heat pushed us into a rhythm of streetlight travel. Buses idled past midnight, taxi windows stayed down, and Athens appeared and disappeared between buildings like something we weren’t quite sure we’d really seen. I don’t remember Athens the way I remember other places, in full daylight detail. Instead, I remember it in fragments: floodlit marble on a hillside, the hush of a city that was, impossibly, once ruled by a goddess.

That’s the strange magic of writing an Athens Greece travel blog when your own memories are incomplete. I’ve given you what I did remember. Now I’ll tell you what was there, whether we saw it or not, the stories that were already old when the marble was new.

A City Named by a Goddess

One thing this Athens Greece travel blog keeps coming back to is how myth and geography overlap. Long before Athens became a capital, before it was even fully a city, it was a prize.

Two gods wanted it: Athena, goddess of wisdom, and Poseidon, god of the sea. Rather than fight over the rocky hill that would become the Acropolis, they agreed to a contest. Each would offer the people a gift, and the people would choose.

Poseidon struck the rock with his trident, and a spring burst forth. The people rushed toward it, then recoiled, because the water was salt, useless for drinking or growing anything. Athena’s gift was quieter. She planted an olive tree, offering wood for building, oil for cooking and light, and fruit to eat. The people chose Athena, and the city took her name.

If you climbed the Acropolis, you would have passed the Erechtheion, the strange, asymmetrical temple built specifically to honor this contest. A mark in the rock inside its precinct is said, whether by faith or tourism or both, to be Poseidon’s trident strike. Nearby, an olive tree grows where Athena’s is said to have stood. Whether it’s the same soil that mattered thirty centuries ago hardly matters. The city still keeps the story alive in stone and root.

A Pantheon of Names

Athena and Poseidon didn’t compete for the city in isolation. They were two of the twelve gods the Greeks called the Olympians, the ruling family of deities said to live atop Mount Olympus. Zeus, king of the gods and god of the sky, was Athena’s father. Hera, his wife, ruled over marriage and family. Apollo governed the sun, music, and prophecy, while his twin sister Artemis ruled the hunt and the moon. Hermes, quick and clever, carried messages between gods and mortals. Aphrodite embodied love and beauty, and Ares, her opposite, embodied war.

How Athena Was Born

History has it…Zeus was said to have swallowed Athena’s mother whole after a prophecy warned her child would surpass him, and Hephaestus later split his skull open with an axe, the strange, violent circumstance under which Athena was born, fully grown and armored.

d at the center of it all, but the Greek pantheon didn’t stop there. Beyond the twelve, the Greeks named hundreds of other gods, minor deities, and spirits: gods of rivers, winds, dawn, sleep, the underworld, individual mountains and springs. Some estimates put the total number of named Greek deities in the hundreds, a whole invisible population layered over the visible world, each with a role, a temperament, and a story.

Standing on a hill in Athens, it’s worth remembering that the contest between Athena and Poseidon wasn’t just two gods arguing. They were members of a much larger, and stranger family, deciding, for one city at least, who would be remembered first.

Where the City Sits

Looking out over Athens from any hill, you notice something strange for a European capital: there’s no dramatic skyline. No sudden towers break the horizon. Instead, the city spreads out in a wide, even sea of low buildings, block after block, almost the same height, stretching all the way to the mountains ringing the basin. It looks less like a city that was planned and more like a city that grew, one small deal at a time. In a way, it was.

These buildings share a name: polykatoikia, meaning “many residences.” They’re the plain, balconied apartment blocks that make up most of Athens, usually five or six stories, concrete, functional, unremarkable on their own. Still, the way they came to exist is one of the more interesting stories in the city’s modern history.

How Antiparochi Built a City

Athens grew fast after the Second World War and the civil war that followed it. People poured in from the countryside looking for work, and the city needed housing quickly, without much public money to build it. A private arrangement called antiparochi, meaning “in exchange,” filled the gap. A family that owned a small house or a plot of land would hand it over to a builder. In return, instead of being paid in cash, the family would receive several finished apartments in the new building once it went up, sometimes enough to live in one and rent out the rest.

No grand city planning office decided how Athens should look. Instead, thousands of individual landowners made thousands of individual bargains, and the polykatoikia system built the city one small trade at a time. That’s why so much of Athens has that same steady rhythm: similar heights, similar concrete, similar balconies looking out over the next building’s balconies. It wasn’t designed to look uniform. It just happened that way, deal by deal, family by family, across a few fast decades.

If you looked up from a taxi window at midnight the way we did, you were probably looking at someone’s grandmother’s old house, traded away years ago for four walls and a balcony of her own.

Stones That Remember the Myth

The Parthenon wasn’t just a temple to Athena. It was a myth carved into architecture, meant to be read the way we’d read a book.

The east pediment, above where visitors would have entered, depicted the birth of Athena herself, springing fully grown and armored from the head of Zeus. The west pediment, facing the city she would come to name, showed the contest itself: Athena and Poseidon frozen mid-offering, the olive tree and the spring, the moment of choosing.

Time has worn away much of that sculpture, and museums far from the hill it was carved for hold what remains. Still, knowing what was once there changes how you look at even a broken, weathered ruin. It wasn’t decoration. It was the story of the city’s own beginning, placed where everyone who climbed that hill would have to look up and see it.

The Hero Who Never Came Home the Same

Athens’s myths aren’t only about gods. They’re about a hero too: Theseus, something like a founding king to a young country, except his story is far stranger than any founding king’s.

Crete once demanded a tribute from Athens: youths sent every so often to feed the Minotaur, a monster part man and part bull. The Athenians built a labyrinth to contain him because he was too dangerous to kill or set loose. Theseus volunteered to go, not as a victim but to end the tribute for good. In Crete, Ariadne, the king’s daughter, fell for him and gave him a spool of thread, a way to find his way back out of the labyrinth once the Minotaur was dead. Theseus killed the beast, followed the thread out, and sailed home.

A Homecoming That Wasn’t

The story doesn’t end cleanly. In some tales, Theseus abandoned Ariadne on an island on the way home. Worse, he forgot to change his ship’s sails from black to white, the signal he’d promised his father he’d raise if he survived. Watching from a cliff and seeing black sails, his father believed his son was dead and threw himself into the sea. That sea still carries his name: the Aegean.

Near the Ancient Agora stands a temple that has survived astonishingly intact, better preserved than almost anything else from ancient Athens: the Temple of Hephaestus, long nicknamed the Theseion after this hero. Its walls once carried scenes from his labors. It’s a strange kind of monument, built for a god of blacksmiths, yet remembered, at least in name, for a man whose heroism came bundled with grief he caused and grief he couldn’t outrun.

Greek Words for This Journey

English	Greek	Sounds Like
Goddess	Θεά	The-A
Myth / Story	Μύθος	ME-thos
Olive tree	Ελιά	E-LIA
Building	Κτίριο	KTI-rio
Streetlight	Φανάρι	Fa-NA-ri
Apartment	Διαμέρισμα	Thia-ME-riz-ma

Closing Thought

We never saw any of this by daylight. But maybe that’s fitting, in its own way. Athens has always been a city half in myth, half in stone, where you’re never entirely sure where the story ends and the history begins. That tension is what keeps this Athens Greece travel blog going, one post at a time.

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The Border

If you are researching Northern Greece Thessaloniki travel, here is what nobody tells you: the moment you land changes everything.

There is a moment when you cross from one country into another and everything shifts. The airport looks the same. The signs look the same. However something changes the moment you enter Greece.

We flew out of Belgrade and touched down in Thessaloniki. When we stepped off the plane, I felt it. The air. The light. Something that is hard to put into words but impossible to miss if you have ever made that crossing yourself.

Our first stop was Thessaloniki. Fittingly, before we even reached the city center, we found ourselves in a town just east of it, because that is exactly where the airport is. A town called Thermi.

Thermi, Where the Hot Springs Are

Thermi is located about 14 kilometers east of central Thessaloniki. Macedonia International Airport, Thessaloniki’s main airport, is also located here.

Thermi means hot springs in Greek. The name comes from the ancient Greek word thermos, meaning warm or hot. People have been coming to these springs since ancient times. The therapeutic waters have drawn visitors for thousands of years.

My father-in-law Yonnie knew this town well. He and Zahari visited the hot springs regularly. So of course we went too.

The water was hot. Very hot. It made me feel heavy, thick and sluggish. I got out and got dressed as quickly as I could. However later that day, I felt better than I had in a long time. Maybe Yonnie and Zahari knew something we did not.

Thermi is also a town of narrow streets. Very narrow. So narrow that even a small car has to pull over to one side to let oncoming traffic pass. I remember watching a man navigate a 1957 Chevy through those streets, wheels up on the sidewalk just to fit through. Classic American car. Ancient Greek town. Some things you cannot plan for.

Thessaloniki, Greece’s Second City

Thessaloniki is Greece’s second largest city and the capital of Northern Greece. Macedonia International Airport serves the city and the wider region.

After Thermi we drove into Thessaloniki. The city is busy, alive, and full of energy. It sits at the head of the Thermaic Gulf and has been an important city since 315 BC when King Cassander founded it, naming it after his wife Thessalonike, the half-sister of Alexander the Great.

We wandered into a jewelry store. Gold earrings, watches, bracelets, all beautiful. Greek gold craftsmanship is something you have to see in person to fully appreciate. The detail, the weight, the warmth of it. We looked for a long time.

I decided my shopping spree should start right there. I bought a small pair of earrings on the spot. I knew that once I left this city I might not see it again. I had to have a souvenir. I am still happy with those earrings today.

Then we ate. And that is where Thessaloniki truly surprised me.

The spanakopita, spinach pie, was the best I have ever tasted in my life. Fresh phyllo pastry, crispy and golden. Spinach and feta filling that was generous and perfectly seasoned. Thessaloniki is known for its food and after one bite I understood why completely.

Diavata, West of Thessaloniki

Diavata is a town west of Thessaloniki, within the greater Thessaloniki metropolitan area.

From Thessaloniki we headed west to Diavata. This is where things got memorable in a way I did not expect.

Someone offered me a donkey ride. I said yes. There was no saddle. Just a thick colorful blanket thrown over the donkey’s back. I was wearing a skirt.

I slid right off.

Some experiences you cannot plan for no matter how hard you try. That was one of them. I laughed. Everyone laughed. Greece has a way of surprising you when you least expect it.

Up in the Mountains, A View Worth Everything

Mount Chortiatis sits east of Thessaloniki and offers sweeping views down toward the Thermaic Gulf and the coastline below.

Before we left the Thessaloniki area we drove up into the mountains. Mount Chortiatis rises just east of the city and the view from up there is something I have never forgotten.

We sat at a café on the mountain. Far below us we could see the beach. The water. The gulf stretching out toward the horizon. From up there the whole world looked calm and ordered and beautiful.

We ordered hot goat milk chocolate. Fresh bread and butter arrived with it. The chocolate was rich and warming. The bread was soft. The butter was cold. The view was endless.

I did not want to leave.

Northern Greece Thessaloniki Travel: What You Should Know

If you are planning a trip to Greece, most people fly straight to Athens. However Northern Greece Thessaloniki travel deserves your attention. Thessaloniki has its own airport, Macedonia International Airport, with direct flights from many European cities.

From Thessaloniki you can easily explore:

East of Thessaloniki: Thermi, Serres, Kavala, Xanthi, Komotini, Alexandroupolis

West of Thessaloniki: Diavata, Veroia, Edessa, Kozani, Florina, Kastoria

Each of these areas has its own character, food, and history. When it comes to Northern Greece Thessaloniki travel, this region is not just a stop on the way to Athens. It is a destination worth your full attention.

Greek Words for This Journey

Here are a few Greek words from this part of your trip:

Greek	English	Pronunciation
Θέρμη (Thermi)	Hot springs	THER-mi
Θερμός (Thermos)	Warm / Hot	THER-mos
Σπανακόπιτα (Spanakopita)	Spinach pie	spah-nah-KOH-pee-tah
Γάιδαρος (Gaidaros)	Donkey	GAH-tha-ros
Βουνό (Vouno)	Mountain	voo-NO
Λεωφορείο (Leoforeio)	Bus	le-o-fo-REI-o
Τρένο (Treno)	Train	TRE-no
Τι ώρα έρχεται το λεωφορείο/τρένο;	What time does the bus/train come?	Ti O-ra ER-he-te to le-o-fo-REI-o/TRE-no?

Northern Greece surprised me at every turn. The hot springs of Thermi. The gold of Thessaloniki. A donkey in Diavata. Hot goat milk chocolate on a mountain with the beach far below.

None of it was in any guidebook I had read. All of it was real.

That is the Greece most people never see. And it is worth every moment of the journey to get there.

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Papou is the Greek word for grandfather. This is a Papou Greek grandfather story about weight, steadiness, and the quiet kind of strength that does not need to announce itself.

A Papou Greek Grandfather Who filled the Room

His name was Yonnie and he was a big fellow. About six feet three and around two hundred pounds. He had a presence when he walked into a room, not because he demanded attention, but because he simply filled the space. He was in his mid-nineties when we visited, and even then, you could see the man he had always been.

Yonnie was the kind of man who let his wife run the home because he trusted her completely. Zahari knew what the children needed, what the house needed, and what the family needed. He trusted that. Whatever she said they needed, it was there. No questions asked. That kind of trust between a husband and wife is its own kind of love.

Family First, Always

Before he married Zahari, Yonnie lived with his father, his sisters, and his brothers. Five grown siblings and their father, all under the same roof. They pooled their money together and they were doing well. That was the Greek way. Family first. Always.

When his father remarried, the grown children needed to find their own way. Yonnie and his sister Letta stayed together until he was ready to marry. He took his portion of what the family had saved and used it to build a life. A home for himself and Zahari. A foundation.

A Home Across the Street

But that was not the end of it. After they married and built their first home, they built a second one. Right across the street. For their daughter, when she married. So she would never be too far away. So the family would stay close.

That is who Yonnie was. A man who built things. Not just houses. Stability. Closeness. A place where family could always find each other.

When thinking of him, its clear he was a man who showed love through what he provided and what he protected. He did not need many words. His actions said enough.

Papou Greek Grandfather: Words for the Men in Your Life

Here are some Greek words that carry the spirit of Papou.

English	Greek	Sounds Like
Grandfather	Παππούς	Pa-poo
Man	Άντρας	AN-dras
Strong	Δυνατός	Thi-na-TOS
Work	Δουλειά	Thu-LEIA
Hands	Χέρια	HE-rea
Sea	Θάλασσα	THA-la-sa
Mountain	Βουνό	Voo-NO
Coffee	Καφές	Ka-FES
Bread	Ψωμί	Pso-MI
Taverna	Ταβέρνα	Ta-VER-na
Olives	Ελιές	EL-IES

He is gone now, but the mark he left has not faded.

The quiet ones leave the boldest marks.

To learn more about Greek culture and language visit the Greek Language Institute at greek-language.gr

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Yia Yia is the Greek word for grandmother. It is often among the first words a Greek child learns. It means grandmother, but it carries so much more than one meaning, love, warmth, safety, and home. My mother-in-law was my daughter’s Yia Yia grandmother. Her name was Zahari.

Above all she was small, but mighty, and grew up an orphan. As a young married woman, she worked the farm that belonged to her in-laws, right alongside them. Her hands were big, and her feet were too. A size nine shoe. Hard work in the open fields was something she handled without complaint

A Yia Yia of Quiet Courage

During WWII, Zahari and her mother-in-law found a German deserter asleep in their barn. He had fled the army and found a place to hide. He looked thin, worn, starved, and thirsty as well. By all accounts, her mother-in-law sent a couple of farmhands to wake him.

They could not wake him, probably from exhaustion. Instead, the women left him there. They brought food, water, and a blanket to keep him warm. They did this for three days. On the fourth day, he was gone, moved on safely, they hoped.

That story says everything about who Zahari was. She saw someone in need, even someone she had every reason to fear, and she helped him anyway. That kind of quiet courage does not ask for anything in return. I think of that story every time I remember visiting her as an older woman.

A Yia Yia Without Words

Even when she was well into her nineties, she had a fresh, clean, pressed hankie tucked into her dress pocket. It seemed like a small thing, but it told me something too. Her care for details. For instance her care for details. Showing up prepared. Being clean and in order, even in her later years, even when no one asked her to.

When my daughter finally met her grandmother at dinner in Kypseli, no words were needed there was clearly a language barrier between them.

Neither one could say much to the other because of it. Still, my daughter knew, without any doubt, that she was loved. Still, some things do not need many words. A warm hand, a steady smile, and full attention say enough on their own.

In fact grandmothers like her carry more than family stories.

In Greek homes, the Yia Yia often holds the language, the recipes, and the memory of hard times survived. She passes these things down, not always in words, but in the way she lives, and sometimes in the way she loves a child she has just met.

Zahari has passed now, but her hankies remain. One found its way to my daughter, a small, lasting piece of a woman who was small in size but mighty in heart.

Greek Family Words and People Who Feel Like Family

English	Greek	Sounds Like
Grandmother	Γιαγιά	Ya-Ya
Grandfather	Παππούς	Pa-pou
Mother	Μητέρα	Mi-TE-ra
Father	Πατέρας	Pa-TE-ras
Sister	Αδερφή	A-ther-FI
Brother	Αδερφός	A-ther-FOS
Aunt	Θεία	THE-a
Uncle	Θείος	THE-os
Cousin	Ξάδερφος	KAS-ther-fos
Baby	Μωρό	Mo-RO
Teacher	Δάσκαλος	THA-ska-los
Neighbor	Γείτονας	YE-to-nas

Zahari did not need the world to know her name. She just lived… fully, quietly, and with open hands. That was enough. That was everything.

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In this blog, we will learn to count to one hundred in Greek. We will learn how to count from twenty-one all the way to one hundred in Greek.

You already know one through twenty from Blog #9 and Blog #11. Now it is time to build on that. Once you know how the pattern works, counting higher becomes much easier. Let us dive right in.

How the Pattern Works

Greek builds bigger numbers the same simple way English does. You say the tens word first, then the ones right after it.

For example, twenty-one is είκοσι ένα, which simply means twenty, one. Thirty-five is τριάντα πέντε, thirty, five. Once you see the pattern, you can build almost any number on your own.

Counting by Tens: Twenty to One Hundred

Start here. These are the round numbers you need to know first.

Number	Greek	How to Say It
20	είκοσι	e’ko-se
30	τριάντα	treánta
40	σαράντα	saránta
50	πενήντα	penénta
60	εξήντα	exénta
70	εβδομήντα	evthonénta
80	ογδόντα	ogthónta
90	ενενήντα	enenénta
100	εκατό	ekató

Putting It All Together: Twenty-one to Thirty

Now try building numbers. Say the tens word, then the ones word right after.

Number	Greek	How to Say It
21	είκοσι ένα	e’ko-se éna
22	είκοσι δύο	e’ko-se théo
23	είκοσι τρία	e’ko-se tréa
24	είκοσι τέσσερα	e’ko-se téssera
25	είκοσι πέντε	e’ko-se pénte
26	είκοσι έξι	e’ko-se éxi
27	είκοσι επτά	e’ko-se eptá
28	είκοσι οκτώ	e’ko-se októ
29	είκοσι εννέα	e’ko-se ennéa
30	τριάντα	treánta

A Few More Examples

Do you see the pattern? The same rule works all the way to ninety-nine. Here are a few more to practice.

Number	Greek	How to Say It
35	τριάντα πέντε	triá-nta pénte
47	σαράντα επτά	saránta eptá
58	πενήντα οκτώ	penínta októ
63	εξήντα τρία	exínta tréa
72	εβδομήντα δύο	evthonénta théo
84	ογδόντα τέσσερα	ogthónta téssera
99	ενενήντα εννέα	enenénta ennéa
100	εκατό	ekató

A Quick Note on Sound

You will notice the Greek letter δ again in words like δύο and δέκα. It still makes that soft “th” sound, just like it did in Blog #9 and Blog #11. Listen closely and copy the soft sound when you practice out loud.

Why This Matters

Knowing these numbers opens a big door. You can use them to ask a price at the market, share your age, read a bus number, or understand a phone number. Practice the tens first this week. Then try building a few numbers of your own using the pattern above.

Once these feel comfortable, you will have covered numbers one through one hundred in Greek. That is a real achievement worth being proud of.

Want to learn more about the Greek language? Visit the Greek Language Institute at greek-language.gr for more resources.

And if you want to build on these basics, SpeakGreek will take you further. Real language for real life. One focused session at a time.

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