what city in france was originally a greek state
Marseille Marseille (English /mɑːrˈseɪ/; French: [maʁsɛj] ( listen), locally: [mɑχˈsɛjə]; Provençal Marselha [maʀˈsejɔ, maʀˈsijɔ]), also known as Marseilles, is a city in France. The capital of the Bouches-du-Rhône department and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, Marseille, on France's south coast, is the country's second largest city, after Paris, with a population of 852,516 in 2012,[1] and an area of 241 km2 (93 sq mi), the 3rd-largest metropolitan area in France after Paris and Lyon.[3]
Athens In Ancient Greek, the name of the city was Ἀθῆναι (Athēnai, pronounced [a.tʰɛ̂ː.nai̯] in Classical Attic) a plural. In earlier Greek, such as Homeric Greek, the name had been current in the singular form though, as Ἀθήνη (Athēnē).[21] It was possibly rendered in the plural later on, like those of Θῆβαι (Thêbai) and Μυκῆναι (Μukênai). The root of the word is perhaps not of Greek or Indo-European origin, and is a possible remnant of the Pre-Greek substrate of Attica,[22] as could be the name of the goddess Athena (Attic Ἀθηνᾶ, Athēnā, Ionic Ἀθήνη, Athēnē, and Doric Ἀθάνα, Athānā), that was always related to the city of Athens. During the medieval period the name of the city was rendered once again in the singular as Ἀθήνα. However, after the establishment of the modern Greek state, and partly due to the conservatism of the written language, Ἀθῆναι [aˈθine] became again the official name of the city and remained so until the abandonment of Katharevousa in the 1970s, when Ἀθήνα, Athína, became the official name.