Note 118.1 — Chapter VII · The Deities as Social-Powers.

The evidence of Anatolia is late, but it tells the same story: Sir William Ramsay has emphasised the importance for early political history of such names as Hieroupolis, the City of the Temple, developing into Hierapolis, the Holy City.118.1 In Hellas the evidence is fuller and older of the religious origin of some, at least, of the πόλεις, for some of the old names reveal the personal name or the appellative of the divinity. Such are Athenai (the settlements of Athena); Potniai, “the place of the revered ones”; Alalkomenai, “the places of Athena Alalkomene”; Nemea, “the sacred groves of Zeus”; Megara, probably “the shrines of the goddess of the lower world”; Diades, Olympia and others. The reason of such development is not hard to seek: the temple would be the meeting-place of many consanguineous tribes, and its sanctuary would safeguard intertribal markets, and at the same time demand fortification and attract a settlement. Mecca, the holy city of Arabia in days long before and after Islam, had doubtless this origin.118.2 We have traces of the same phenomenon in our English names: Preston, for instance, showing the growth of a city out of a monastery. In the later history of Hellenism the religious origin of the πόλεις is still more frequently revealed by its name: the god who leads the colonists to their new home gives his name to the settlement; hence the very numerous “Apolloniai.”