Violet-crowned City

Aristophănēs calls Athens ιoστεφανoζ (Equitēs, 1323 and 1329), and again in the Acharnians, 637. Macaulay uses the phrase, “city of the violet crown.” Ion (a violet) was a representative king of Athens, whose four sons gave names to the four Athenian classes; and Greece in Asia Minor was called “Ion-ia.” Athens was the city of Ion, crowned king, and hence the “Ion crowned” or violet-crowned.

Similarly Paris is called the “City of Lilies,” by a pun on the word Louis (lys, a lily).

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.