These forms (τοί, ταί) served as epic and poetic equivalents of the standard Attic article forms οἱ and αἱ (nominative plural). Homer used them freely, while they rarely appeared in Ionic prose or tragedy but were standard in Doric and certain other dialects. In some dialects they functioned as the regular definite article, as when Syracusan Greek said 'Hieron and the Syracusans' using τοί. The forms represent the ancient dialectal diversity of Greek before Attic became the dominant literary standard. They remind us that biblical Greek stood at the end of a long tradition where different communities spoke recognizably distinct varieties of the language.