Academy
Once upon a time a powerful king and queen ruled Sparta, a powerful city state in ancient Greece. The king and queen, Tyndareus and Leda, had four children—two daughters, Helen and Clytemnestra, and twin boys, Castor and Pollux. However, the paternity of two of the children was questionable. According to rumour, the god Zeus (in the guise of a swan!) had had an affair with Leda and was purportedly the father of Helen and Pollux.
So, you may ask, how can someone be the father of only one of a set of twins?! Apparently, many ancient peoples had a superstition that twins were somehow ill-omened. if you could find a way of explaining that perhaps one of the twins was of divine origin, then maybe things wouldn’t work out too badly after all. As it happened, Clytemnestra turned out to be the child doomed to a life of tragedy. But that’s another story, an aspect of which involves the origins of the word tantalize.
The first daughter, Helen, was renowned for her beauty. When she was ten years old, she was abducted by Theseus, the king of Athens. Outraged, her twin brothers set off to find and bring her home. They achieved this with the connivance of an Athenian warrior and hero, Akademos, who led them to where Helen was hidden, helped rescue her, and so saved her from an undesirable marriage to Theseus. Several years later, when married, Helen would be abducted yet again, this time by Paris, son of the Trojan king. This act of passion caused the Trojan War. Helen became known as “the face that launched a thousand ships”.
But back to Akademos. As a reward for his help in rescuing Helen from Theseus, the Spartans rewarded him with an olive grove on the outskirts of Athens. This grove became a public park known as the Grove of Akademos.
About eight hundred years later, a philosopher and teacher named Plato lived next to this park where, in 387 BCE, he established a school which became known as the Academia.1 When Plato died, he was buried in this park.
From these origins we get the words academe, academia, academic, and academy.
The word ‘academy’ is first seen in English in the mid-1400s.
1 Aristotle, one of Plato’s students, established his own school in 335 BCE in a park near a temple called Apollon Lykeios which was dedicated to the god Apollo. Aristotle’s school became known as the Grove of Lykeios, a name which has come down to us as the Lyceum. Today, in France, the high school system which prepares students for university is known as the Lycée.
So, you may ask, how can someone be the father of only one of a set of twins?! Apparently, many ancient peoples had a superstition that twins were somehow ill-omened. if you could find a way of explaining that perhaps one of the twins was of divine origin, then maybe things wouldn’t work out too badly after all. As it happened, Clytemnestra turned out to be the child doomed to a life of tragedy. But that’s another story, an aspect of which involves the origins of the word tantalize.
The first daughter, Helen, was renowned for her beauty. When she was ten years old, she was abducted by Theseus, the king of Athens. Outraged, her twin brothers set off to find and bring her home. They achieved this with the connivance of an Athenian warrior and hero, Akademos, who led them to where Helen was hidden, helped rescue her, and so saved her from an undesirable marriage to Theseus. Several years later, when married, Helen would be abducted yet again, this time by Paris, son of the Trojan king. This act of passion caused the Trojan War. Helen became known as “the face that launched a thousand ships”.
But back to Akademos. As a reward for his help in rescuing Helen from Theseus, the Spartans rewarded him with an olive grove on the outskirts of Athens. This grove became a public park known as the Grove of Akademos.
About eight hundred years later, a philosopher and teacher named Plato lived next to this park where, in 387 BCE, he established a school which became known as the Academia.1 When Plato died, he was buried in this park.
From these origins we get the words academe, academia, academic, and academy.
The word ‘academy’ is first seen in English in the mid-1400s.
1 Aristotle, one of Plato’s students, established his own school in 335 BCE in a park near a temple called Apollon Lykeios which was dedicated to the god Apollo. Aristotle’s school became known as the Grove of Lykeios, a name which has come down to us as the Lyceum. Today, in France, the high school system which prepares students for university is known as the Lycée.
No comments have been added yet.
