Two third-declension nouns with slight irregularities

In previous reading assignments, you encountered the noun γυνή, γυναικός, ἡ. In contrast to ἄνθρωπος, which refers to a human being without implication of gender, γυνή identifies a person in a binary gender scheme as a female; it is also frequently used (as in Lysias 1) to refer to a woman in a specifically female social role, as a wife or spouse. The complementary term, ἀνήρ, ἀνδρός, ὁ, is also frequent, identifies a male; like γυνή, the term ἀνήρ also frequently refers to person in specifically male social roles, such as a husband. γυνή and ἀνήρ are the normal terms in Attic Greek for “husband” and “wife”, but ἀνήρ can refer to social roles that are limited to males. Only males could be citizens of Athens, for example, and only citizens could serve on juries, so when Euphiletos speaks directly to members of the jury, he can call them ἄνδρες.

Both γυνή and ἀνήρ are third declension nouns, with slight irregularities in their accent patterns. Notice, however, that the nominative plural endings and the genitive, dative and accusative endings are all regular, predictable third-declension forms.

	Singular	Plural
nominative	γυνή, ἀνήρ	γυναῖκες, ἄνδρες
genitive	γυναικός, ἀνδρός	γυναικῶν, ἀνδρῶν
dative	γυναικί, ἀνδρί	γυναιξί, ἀνδράσι
accusative	γυναῖκα, ἄνδρα	γυναῖκας, ἄνδρας
vocative	γύναι, ἄνερ	γυναῖκες, ἄνδρες

Three other common nouns that refer to family show the same pattern as ἀνήρ, ἀνδρός, ὁ are πατήρ, πατρός, ὁ (‘father, ancestor’), μήτηρ, μητρός, ἡ (‘mother’), and θυγάτηρ, θυγατρός, ἡ (‘daughter’).

A variation on the third-declension pattern

The noun πόλις, πόλεως, ἡ refers to the fundamental political unit of the classical world, the “city-state”. (Our words political and politics come from this root.) A citizen was someone with full membership in this community, and was called a πολίτης, πολίτου, ὁ.

The genitive singular πόλεως should bother you: it’s breaking the first accent rules you learned! In the table below, you’ll see the same oddity in the genitive plural. What’s going on?

πόλις is actaully a third declension noun. Historically, its genitive singular was combined a root πολη- with the normal genitive singular ending -ος. In Attic Greek, the pronounciation changed over time: the long and short vowels swapped their length (what linguists call “quantitative metathesis”), but the accent stayed put, resulting in πόλεως (from an earlier πόληος). The genitive plural eventually copied the pattern of the singular (linguists refer to this as “assimilation”). While the resulting paradigm looks a little different from third-declension patterns you’ve seen so far, it’s broadly similar: you can recognize the regular endings -ι and -σι for the data singular and plural, for example, and if you recall how episolon contracts with iota, you can see how the nominative accusative forms come from a regular contraction of πολε- with a regular third-declension ending -ες.

	Singular	Plural
nominative	πόλις	πόλεις
genitive	πόλεως	πόλεων
dative	πόλει	πόλεσι
accusative	πόλιν	πόλεις
vocative	πόλι	πόλεις