Expressing the Agent (από)

When you turn a sentence into the passive, the original doer does not have to disappear. You can still name it — the letter was written by John, the house was built by an architect. English marks that doer with by. Greek has no dedicated word for this "by"; it reuses the ordinary preposition από ("from"), followed by the accusative. This page is about that one construction: how to attach the agent to a passive verb, and — just as importantly — when a native speaker would rather not.

από + accusative = "by"

The rule itself is short: put από in front of the doer and inflect the doer as an accusative.

Notice what happened to the sentence when it went passive. The active Ο Σεφέρης έγραψε το βιβλίο ("Seferis wrote the book") has two roles: Ο Σεφέρης is the subject (nominative), το βιβλίο is the object (accusative). In the passive, those roles swap direction: the old object το βιβλίο becomes the new subject, and the old subject ο Σεφέρης is demoted to an από-phrase — από τον Σεφέρη. Here we care only about the demoted doer. For the other pairing English speakers confuse this with — καίω/καίγομαι, where nothing is demoted because there was never a second participant — see active/passive verb pairs.

Why "from" doubles as "by"

For an English speaker the choice of preposition feels arbitrary — why from and not something like "by"? The logic is actually clean once you see it. Greek conceives the agent as the source the action flows out of: the writing comes from Seferis, the building comes from the architect. από is the source preposition (ήρθα *από την Αθήνα* — "I came from Athens"), so it is the natural fit. The same word therefore covers the doer of an action and the cause of an event, because Greek treats both as the origin the result springs from.

In από τη φωτιά and από τον αέρα there is no conscious "doer" at all — a fire and the wind are causes, not agents. Greek does not care about that distinction: source is source. This is why από is your single tool for both the animate agent (by John) and the inanimate cause (by the fire, from the wind).

The one place από is genuinely ambiguous

Because από is also the plain "from," a passive with an από-phrase can sometimes be read two ways, and Greek does not disambiguate it for you:

Animacy usually settles it: a person is read as the agent, a place as the source. Where it does not, Greek reaches for a different word — εκ μέρους or a rebuilt active clause for the agent, leaving από to the source. Note too that the source reading is the only one available when the verb is one of motion or transfer: Το γράμμα στάλθηκε από την Αθήνα can only mean "the letter was sent from Athens."

The agent takes the accusative

από always governs the accusative — this never varies. So the doer must appear in its accusative form, not its dictionary (nominative) shape. Watch the article and the noun ending change together:

οι ηγέτες → τους ηγέτες, η δήμαρχος → τη δήμαρχο: the nominative is gone. If you are shaky on which article and ending the accusative uses after a preposition, that is drilled on the accusative after prepositions. The one thing to lock in here is that από never takes the nominative — ×από ο Σεφέρης is impossible.

Agent (από) vs instrument (με)

Here is where English quietly trips you. English "by" and "with" do two different jobs, and Greek splits them across two prepositions:

• από + accusative — the agent or cause (who or what brought the action about): written *by John, destroyed **by the fire*.
• με + accusative — the instrument or means (what the doer used to bring it about): written *with a pencil, cut **with scissors, made **by hand*.

The trap is the English phrase "by hand". It looks like an agent because of the word by, but it is a means, so Greek uses με, not από:

A single passive can carry both at once — the agent with από, the instrument with με: Το ψωμί ζυμώθηκε *από τον φούρναρη με τα χέρια* ("The bread was kneaded by the baker with his hands"). Two "by/with" roles, two prepositions, no overlap.

Register: Greek often skips the agented passive entirely

Now the honest part, and the reason this is a B1 rather than an A2 page. Just because you can build an agented passive does not mean a Greek speaker would. In everyday speech, Greek strongly prefers the active with the doer as subject, often with the object doubled by a clitic pronoun:

Literally that is "This song, Hatzidakis wrote it" — active, with το doubling the fronted object. It carries exactly the meaning of an English passive but sounds completely natural in conversation. The agented passive of the same idea —

— is perfectly correct, but it belongs to written and formal register: news reports, encyclopedias, academic prose, ceremonial announcements. In casual talk it can sound stiff or bookish. This is the mirror image of English, where the agented passive ("was written by") is neutral in every register. The journalistic uses — where the agented passive genuinely is the default — are collected on journalistic style. Both of these are correct Greek; what differs is where you would meet them.

There is a second, even more common escape hatch: drop the agent altogether. If the doer is unknown, obvious, or irrelevant, Greek leaves it out and uses a bare, agentless passive — Το σπίτι χτίστηκε το 1920 ("The house was built in 1920"). That agentless passive, and the everyday Μου έκλεψαν το πορτοφόλι ("someone stole my wallet") alternative to it, are the subject of impersonal and agentless passives. Between the active and the agentless passive, most passive-meaning sentences in real Greek never name an agent with από at all — which is exactly why, when one does, it reads as deliberate and formal.

Common Mistakes

1. Using με for a personal agent. English "with" tempts you here, but a person who does the action takes από, never με.

2. Leaving the agent in the nominative. από governs the accusative, so the doer's article and ending must be accusative.

3. Rendering an instrument with από. A tool or method is a means — that is με.

4. Using a weak pronoun as the agent. από takes a strong pronoun, never a clitic: not ×από τον, but από αυτόν / απ' αυτόν.

Key Takeaways

• The passive agent is από + accusative; Greek has no dedicated "by" and reuses its word for "from", because it treats the doer as the source of the action.
• The same από covers both the animate agent (από τον Γιάννη) and the inanimate cause (από τη φωτιά).
• Keep the agent (από) apart from the instrument/means (με): written *by John = από, but made **by hand = *με το χέρι.
• Spoken Greek usually avoids the agented passive, preferring the active (το έγραψε ο...) or an agentless passive; reserve γράφτηκε από... for formal and written register.