Etymology - Words and Myths Trivia Quiz

Answer: without wax

In spite of the excellent state of Roman roads, statues would from time to time become cracked and chipped in transit. Disreputable stonemasons would hastily repair damaged statues with wax and send them on to customers. As soon as the goods were exposed to heat or jostled about a bit, the chicanery would become apparent.

Hence, a dependable statue-maker who repaired the damage properly came to be known as being 'without wax', or sincere.

Answer: The Battle of Marathon

It is reported that, after the fiercely-contested Battle of Marathon, a messenger was dispatched to Athens to report that the Greeks had defeated the Persians. According to legend, the messenger ran twenty-six miles straight to the city, delivered his message and promptly fell dead of exhaustion.

Answer: False

You'll find the humerus is actually the long bone in the upper arm. 'Humor' derives from the four humours - bodily fluids which Aristotle, Hippocrates and Aesclepius believed dictated one's general demeanour.

Answer: mouse

Believe it or not, ancient doctors thought taut muscles resembled little mice under the skin, hence 'little mouse'.

Answer: He doesn't have one

There is no woman in Greek myth who both married her father and murdered her mother. Elektra was indeed complicit in the murder of her mother, Clytemnestra, by her brother Orestes, but out of revenge, and not as the result of sexual jealousy, however oblique or unwitting. Agamemnon, Elektra's father, had been murdered on his return from victory against Troy by Clytemnestra and her lover. Clytemnestra had in fact had ample cause to murder her husband: on instructions from Athena, Agamemnon had sliced their daughter Iphiginea (still living) into small strips and thrown her into the sea to ensure the safe passage of his fleet.

Answer: in Hades

Guilty of hubris (overweening pride - a crime against the gods themselves), Tantalus was condemned to eternal hunger and thirst in Hades - specifically in Tartarus, a section of the Underworld reserved for evildoers (thanks to Lamia74 for pointing that out).

He stood forever in a cool, running spring, overhung with vines which were heavy with juicy grapes. Whenever he reached up to grasp the delectable fruit, however, the vines would snatch themselves just out of reach. Similarly, when he bent to scoop water from the stream, the water level would drop just below his reach.

Answer: Siren

The Sirens' irresistibly beautiful cry lured sailors to their deaths on rocky shores. Odysseus tethered himself to the mast of his ship to keep from succumbing to the call; his crew filled their ears with wax. Zeus alone knows why such a jarring, piercing sound should have been named after the most exquisite, deadly song in myth.

Answer: True

'Manufactured' quite literally means 'made with the hands' (manus + facere).

Answer: And you, Brutus?

Anyone who has studied Shakespeare probably knows this one. Caesar had foreseen the treachery of Cassius, but his trusted friend and advisor, Brutus, was not the man he'd expected to stab him in the back.

Answer: nephew

This lovely word came into being in the early Roman Catholic Church. It is an oblique, euphemistic innuendo for describing high-ranking church officials' quaint practice of giving their illegitimate sons cushy jobs within the religious hierarchy to keep them quiet. Since priests were expected to be celibate, their offspring were nicely referred to as 'nephews' and presto - a new word was born.

Answer: False

The planets are named after Roman Gods, although they all have their Greek equivalents. Mars = Ares, Uranus = Ouranos (a pre-Olympian god), Pluto = Hades, Jupiter = Zeus, Saturn = Kronos (also pre-Olympian), Venus = Aphrodite, Mercury = Hermes, Neptune = Poseidon. In Ancient Greek, Earth is called Gaia, or Ge, who was a pre-Olympian goddess.

Answer: False

'In camera' is in fact a Latin phrase meaning 'in a room'. 'Camera' is the origin of the English word 'chamber' (coming via the French 'chambre'), and has entered the language as is owing to the 'light-chamber' design of the device to which it refers.

Answer: False

Only July and August are named after Roman Emperors - Julius and Augustus Caesar - and it is no coincidence that these are the only two consecutive months with 31 days in them. The Roman calender originally had ten named months, which is why the months September (7), October (8), November (9) and December (10) correspond to Roman numbers which seem incorrect.

The winter months of January and February were considered not even worth naming, as nothing ever happened then.

Answer: Left

Long after the fall of Rome, indeed, well into the twentieth century, a superstition has prevailed regarding left-handed people. They have been variously believed to be witches, demons, inferior, traitors, etc.

Answer: False

The Titan Kronos has survived into modern Western mythology as Old Father Time ('chronos' in Greek means 'time'), complete with long beard and hourglass, but he is Zeus's father, not grandfather, and the son of Ouranos (Uranus in the Roman tradition), the Sky, and Gaia, the Earth. Fearing the prophecy that a son of his would become king of the gods, Kronos swallowed his offspring.

His wife Rea rescued her favourite, Zeus, and fed Kronos a swaddled stone instead. He consequently vomited up the Olympian gods along with the stone, which Zeus set up as a monument at Pythos (later Delphi).