ΟΔΟΣ (Odos)
But the word for “road” or “street” that everyone learns in First Year Ancient Greek is ὁδός, hodos. We learn it because it gives us odometer and the Biblical book of Exodos, and also because it is one of the relatively rare feminine 2nd Declension nouns.
And modern Greek seems to use οδός (odos, note the lack of an ‘h’, since Greek lost the Aspirate over the centries) for the streets of a city. For example, there is Οδός Αιóλου, Aiolou Street, named after Theseus’ father in Athens. But also, little tiny—very tiny—streets in itty-bitty rural villages like Vitina in Arcadia are labelled with ΟΔΟΣ.
Ὁδός (hodos) turns up on Homer and other ancient literature, but it seems usually to be a road outside of town, not a city street, as in this vivid simile about bees along a trail:
They are like a swarm of wasps or bees, holed up
In a hive they have made near a trail through cliffs.
οἳ δ’, ὥς τε σφῆκες μέσον αἰόλοι ἠὲ μέλισσαι
οἰκία ποιήσωνται ὁδῷ ἔπι παιπαλοέσσῃ
— Homer, Iliad, 12.167-12.168 (Lombardo, trans.)
(Not purely an ancient problem! See, AD 2024, North Carolina.)
Pindar mentions a ὁδός ἁμαξιτός (hodos amaxitos), a “wagon road”, in Nemean Odes 6.56.
And there is the very famous τρίοδος (triodos), the “place where three roads come together”, where Oedipus ran into his father.
In Sophocles’s play, Oedipus Tyrannos, no one actually says triodos, as far as I can tell, but the poet and his characters definitely use hodos to mean “road out in the country”. So when Oedipus, in a state of growing agitation, questions his wife about the past, he asks:
Οἰδίπους
καὶ ποῦ ʼσθʼ ὁ χῶρος οὗτος οὗ τόδʼ ἦν πάθος;
Ἰοκάστη
Φωκὶς μὲν ἡ γῆ κλῄζεται, σχιστὴ δʼ ὁδὸς
ἐς ταὐτὸ Δελφῶν κἀπὸ Δαυλίας ἄγει.
Oedipus
And where was this land, where this terrible event happened?
Jocasta
The land called Phocis, and at a divided road
The same one that goes from Daulis to Delphi.
— Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannos 732–734
Later, we get the “triple” aspect of the fateful road when Oedipus recounts to Jokasta his version of events:
καί σοι, γύναι, τἀληθὲς ἐξερῶ. τριπλῆς
ὅτʼ ἦ κελεύθου τῆσδʼ ὁδοιπορῶν πέλας,
And to you, wife, I will say the truth. When I was hiking (ὁδοιπορῶν, odoiporōn “road-walking”), near this triple path [κελεύθου, keleuthos]…
So that’s ὁδός, hodos! Remember, Ancient Greek students, it is second declension, with -ος -ου endings, but it is feminine: ἡ ὁδός, τῆς ὁδοῦ.