Greek Road-Vocabulary, AD 2024
A “car” is an αυτοκίνητο, pronounced aftokinitiko; this is of course a “self-mover”, something that is “auto-kinetic”, or “auto-mobile”, of course. Amusingly, this word appears in Ancient Greek! αὐτοκίνητος, ον, shows up in Aristotle’s Physics, and a number of other less-often-read works: “the thing that moves with nothing moving it.” We rented a Toyota Avgo (“Egg”) for driving around Rhodes. With only three cylinders, it barely qualified as an αυτοκίνητο.
The roads that you might drive on range from the most modern highways you can imagine down to dirt tracks. For getting from town to town, you might go on a major highways, Αυτοκινητόδρομοι (aftokinitodromi, “car-racetrack”) or on Εθνικές Οδοί (ethnikes odi, “National roads”). Their main difference is that motorways (Greek: Αυτοκινητόδρομοι) adhere to higher quality construction standards than National Roads (Greek: Εθνικές Οδοί).
The biggest kind of road is the δρόμος δύο λωρίδων κυκλοφορίας, “fast-road with two tracks for circulation”. These are the ones with tolls.
This is a super-set of the ασφαλτοστροωμένος δρόμος, “asphalt-paved fast-road”. [Ἄσφαλτος, asphaltos]](http://folio2.furman.edu/lsj/?urn=urn:cite2:hmt:lsj.chicago_md:n16875) is a good ancient word, used, among other things, to describe the “pitch” that Noah used to waterproof the Ark (Genesis 6.14). A smaller paved road is a δευτερύων ασφαλτόδρομος (defterion asphaltodromos), “secondary paved road.”
Of dirt roads χωματόδρομοι, as Aristotle might have said, there are four types. A “main dirt road” is a κύριος χωματόδρομος (kirios chōmatodromos) (literally, a “lordly dirt road”). Of lesser stature is a δευτερύων χωματόδρομος, “secondary dirt road”. More rugged yet is your δευτερωύων χωματόδρομος μόνο για 4x4, “secondary dirt road only for a 4x4.” Amy and I walked a fair number of miles on examples of the δευτερωύων χωματόδρομος κακής βατότητας, “secondary dirt road of bad condition for going along it.”
Those are all roads for αυτοκίνητα. For folks on foot, our πεζοί, there is an equally well-developed taxonomy.
Inside towns, especially those built on the sides of hills (which seem to be all of them, based on what we’ve seen), you have πεζόδρομοι, “pedestrian ways”, winding narrowly among houses.
If one of these is bigger, perhaps a maintained remnant of ancient road, it is a διαμορφωμένο μονοπατί (diamorphōmeno monopati), a “wide-laid trail”.
Up in the mountains or down in the gorges (which are many and are called φαράγγια (pharangia), with the singular being φαράγγι, pharangi), you hope to find a φανερό μονοπάτι, a “well-defined path”.
Alas, very often as you hike around the remoter mountains of Greece, you will find yourself on an ασαφές μονοπάτι (asaphes monopati). Students of ancient Greek will recognize ἀσαφής -ές, “unclear”. So this is the “unclear, indistinct path”. Use your compass; go slowly; and keep your head!
Happily, Greece, like most of Europe, is sufficiently heavily settled that you can’t really walk two miles in any direction without coming to some road, either a lovely ασφαλτοστροωμένος δρόμος, or at least a χωματόδρομος where you can be sure that a local will come by, in the ubiquitout 1982 red Datsun pickup, to tend his goats; these folks, like country folks in the Carolinas, will move heaven and earth to help you if you are polite.
