Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Archon
/ˈɑːrkɒn/noun
A chief magistrate of an ancient Greek city, or by extension any presiding official.
The Greek roots
ἄρχων
árchōn
ruler, chief magistrate
Literally: “the one who rules”
Follow a root:ἄρχων1 word
The story of the word
Athens elected nine archons a year, and the senior one gave his name to the year, so Greek dates read as in the archonship of so-and-so. Ἄρχειν carries the two things a ruler needs at once, to begin and to lead, which is why archaic and monarch grow off the same stem. Gnostic writers then handed the word to the hostile powers governing the material world, and that is the sense most readers meet outside a classics seminar.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
monarchanarchyhierarchypatriarcharchaic
In a sentence
The list of archons is how we date most of the fifth century.
In their cosmology the archons keep the soul locked inside matter.