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CLASSICS 11
The Lost City
of Atlantis
Mr Nick Lee
In June, Mr Lee of the Geography Department gave
a well received, cross-curricular talk to the Classics
Society about the legend of the Lost City of Atlantis and
possible links with the eruption of the Thera volcano.
I first became interested in this topic whilst at university, studying
the proposed impact of the Thera volcano (modern day Santorini)
on eastern Turkey. I became fascinated by the Minoan Hypothesis;
the theory that the great and powerful Minoan civilisation on Crete
was eradicated in a few short years, possibly as a result of a truly
cataclysmic eruption from the Thera volcano in 1600BCE. From
this, I stumbled across the idea of the link between the Minoan
Hypothesis and the fabled story of the Lost City of Atlantis, as written
about by Plato in around 360 BCE. Legend has it that this great,
powerful, utopian society sank into the depths of the sea amidst
‘violent earthquakes and great floods’. The legend of Atlantis has
intrigued many an intrepid explorer throughout history, desperately
searching for its supposedly hidden treasures. I was fascinated by the
question of whether Atlantis was real or not; was there a mythical,
utopian civilisation that sank into the sea or did Plato base his story
around catastrophic demise of the Minoans in 1600BCE as a result
of massive eruption from Thera around this time? The similarities
with the demise of the Minoans are unquestionable, but, still to this
day, romanticists and explorers continue to search the great oceans
in an attempt to find the Lost City of Atlantis and all its riches that
supposedly lie at the bottom of the sea.
L4 Roman Day
2017
Mr Anthony Smethurst
On September 22,
published author Ben
Kane made his first
visit to Bancroft’s,
giving a presentation
to the L4. The pupils
were given an insight
into a wide variety
of aspects of Roman
life. The morning
session covered such
domestic matters
as housing, slavery,
clothing and food.
In the afternoon, the focus shifted to entertainment, and the
various activities of the Roman army, culminating in the pupils
being given the opportunity to handle a variety of weapons.
The day came to a close with a Q&A session, during which the
L4th displayed their enthusiasm for all things Roman.
A very enjoyable day was had by all!
Exploring Etymological Links Between the
Classical Languages and Other Languages
Rhianna Padman, U6N
I wanted to see if I could discover
any connections between
Malayalam, my native language,
and the classical languages. I also
wanted to look at how one root
can develop into a whole system of
words in different languages with
dissimilar meanings.
In order to do this, I had to look at the
Proto-Indo-European Language (PIE),
estimated to be spoken between 4500
BCE to 2500 BCE. PIE is the linguistic
reconstruction of the common ancestor
of Greek, Latin and Sanskrit (from which
Malayalam is partially derived). Malayalam
is not a widely known language, originating
from Kerala in South India, and so
researching was incredibly tough. Having
said this, I was able to find some words
that I could consider, especially between
Latin and Malayalam. For example, take
mundane, at first glance it lives up to
its meaning, dull and boring. It comes,
however, from the Latin, mundus, earth or
worldly but it also can mean decorations or
elegant dress. The week before my talk, I
had gone to a wedding during which I came
upon, by, the word mundu which is the
traditional dress Malayali men would wear.
I traced back and found both mundane and
mundu originate from the
PIE *mh₂nd
- (to
adorn). I find it especially fascinating how
this singular root evolved into these two
completely different words.
Although, Malayalam, is actually a Dravidian
language, a large majority of its vocabulary
stems from Sanskrit. It is like English, as
technically English is a Germanic language.
If, however, we were to look at a dictionary,
52.5% of English words are from Latin
sources, 10.1% from Greek and 37.4%
from other sources. Why then is English
considered a Germanic language not a
Romance language? Firstly, because of the
grammar; nouns in the Romance languages
have a gender, and adjectives match the
number and gender of nouns. Also, the
verb conjugation systems in the Romance
languages are all very similar, whereas
English has its own system, as well as the
Romance languages having more verb tenses.
Furthermore, having looked at a list of the
most common words used on an everyday
basis, I found that about 70% of those
words are from Germanic origin. These are
a few reasons why English is considered a
Germanic language.
I discovered some interesting English
etymologies. For instance, disaster (dus +
ἀστήρ
) is from the Greek, literally meaning
bad star as the Greeks blamed planetary
positions for calamities. Another word
derived from Greek is oxymoron (
ὀξύς +
μωρός
), sharp and dull, and therefore is in
itself an oxymoron. A humorous derivation
in Greek is Cerberus, the mythical dog that
guarded the underworld, from
*k̑érberos
(PIE), meaning spotted, thus the god of the
underworld actually named his dog Spot.
The word shampoo is actually from Sanskrit
origin (capayati) meaning to knead. Did you
know that salad and salary both come from
the Latin word for salt (sal)? Salary originally
came from a Roman soldier’s allowance
to buy salt as it was so valuable and salad
vegetables were often seasoned with salty
dressing. Or that hysteria and hysterectomy
come from the Greek
ὑστέρα
(womb)? A
hysterectomy is a surgical removal of the
womb which is perfectly logical. But hysteria
stems from Hippocratic medical teachings of
the “Wandering Womb,” which suggested
that many diseases women suffered from
were caused by the uterus moving of its
own accord. Finally a word derived from
Malayalam, pariah: para in Malayalam is a
large drum and it was used to announce the
king’s notices to the public. Paraiyar were
the drummers using the para and were seen
as the lowest caste in society. I thoroughly
enjoyed researching the topic and finding all
these connections between languages as I
traced back how the words we know today
were produced.