The City of Philadelphia makes me giggle. It's also a good place to start since this blog began with the idea of finding links between the modern world and the Classical world.
It's known as the city of Brotherly Love, and that's a pretty accurate translation of what Philadelphia meant in the original Greek (from philo, to love, and adelphos, brother or sibling). It's even a nice sentiment: we are all brothers, and we love each other as such.
But that word, the Greek philadelphos, was applied to a person long before America was a twinkle in an explorer's eye: Ptolemy II Philadelphos, the second of the Ptolemies to rule Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great. In his case, philadelphos meant "sibling-loving," and for good reason: he'd married his full sister. Together, they were philadelphoi, the sibling lovers.
So that's why the name Philadelphia makes me giggle a little bit when I think about it. Such a good and noble idea behind its naming, and so much that nobody ever hears about hiding in the history of the word.
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