Why is the Greek definite article τη duplicated in this sentence?

Question

I was translating a simplified version of Two Friends and a Bear, one of Aesop's fables, listed as #65 in the Perry Index. The text begins with the sentence:

Δύο φίλοι τῇ ὁδῷ τῇ εἰς τὴν χώραν ἔσπευδον.

(My translation) Two friends were hastening by means of the road into the country.

I wanted to know, why is the definite article τῇ duplicated in this sentence? You can see that there are two definite articles surrounding ὁδῷ (road).

(Last I heard, Ancient Greek questions were kosher on this forum. Forgive me if I'm wrong, or if the rules have changed without me knowing.)

Answer 1

English:

I followed the road to Sparta.

This could mean two things, which will become clear if you add more context:

Departing Athens I took the road to Sparta. I followed the road to Sparta for twenty minutes, until I came across a soothsayer's booth.

This means there is a road to Sparta, and I followed it.

I departed Gytheion for Sparta and took the main road to Megalopolis. I knew that road passed by Pharis and Sparta, so I followed the road to Sparta and found lodgings in a sparsely furnished, uncomfortable inn (so I knew I had arrived in the right city).

This means there is a road to Megalopolis, and I followed it until I reached Sparta.

In the former example, the road to Sparta is best considered a unit: the phrase to Sparta can be said to belong to the road, and not to the verb followed directly.

In the latter example, to Sparta modifies the verb followed: it does not belong with the word road specifically.

In Greek, when you want to indicate that a certain phrase belongs to a specific noun, you can do this by repeating the article after the noun and before the phrase, as it was done in your text.

Answer 2

As you probably already know, Ancient Greek has a syntactic distinction between attributive and predicative modifiers. ὁ MOD NOUN or ὁ NOUN ὁ MOD are "attributive" (the MOD NOUN), while ὁ NOUN MOD and MOD ὁ NOUN are "predicative" (the NOUN is MOD).

Notably, though, this syntax can be used even when the modifier isn't an adjective: in this case, ὁδῷ is the noun, and the prepositional phrase εἰς τὴν χώραν is the modifier, in attributive position. So this literally means "the road, the into-the-country one" or "the into-the-country road".

In idiomatic English, we would just say "two friends were hurrying down the road into the country". But as Cerberus explains, the Greek syntax here is making it clear that the "into the country" modifies the road, not the hurrying; in English, it's ambiguous (even though it doesn't make much difference to the meaning).

Answer 3

Δύο φίλοι τῇ ὁδῷ τῇ εἰς τὴν χώραν ἔσπευδον.

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Δύο φίλοι ἔσπευδον τῇ ὁδῷ τῇ (ἀγούσῃ) εἰς τὴν χώραν.

(ἁγούσῃ < ἄγω = οδηγώ = lead)

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Δύο φίλοι πήγαιναν βιαστικά δια μέσω της οδού που οδηγούσε στη χώρα.

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Δύο φίλοι περπατούσαν βιαστικά στο δρόμο για τη χώρα.

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Two friends were hurrying in the street (leading) to the city.

Τhe word "χώρα" originally means "region", but later "city or village".