Ostensibly a book about the Greek alphabet, this is really more like a book about Greek culture. The overall effect is not unlike that of Leo Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish, reviewed elsewhere. Following are some of the fun facts I learned from as much of this book as I read.
Gamma is for gyne: In ancient Athens, girls were fed less than boys, but in Sparta they went to school and had property and inheritance rights. Given this cultural heritage, how did Sophocles come to write so sympathetically about the plight of women?
Delta is for diagignesthai, to discern, from which we get diagnosis. Dr. Benjamin Lee Gordon points out that the Persians "resorted more frequently to spells than to drugs on the grounds that, although spells might not cure the disease, they at least would not kill the patient." Hippocrates seems to have originated the doctor-as-God problem that we still have in Western medicine. He said, "The physician must wear an expression of sympathy and understanding, never showing the slightest perplexity.... by predicting-- and making explicit-- who will live and who will die, the physician will ensure himself against censure."
Zeta is for zoon ("living thing), from which zoo. The first recorded zoo in the Western world was that of the Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut, 16th c BC, focusing on animals of Africa. Aristotle's groundbreaking work, Inquiries on Animals, full of Nature Channel-type behavioral observations, was written at the urging of his pupil, Alexander the Great.
Theta is for theater and Thespis, a legendary, possibly mythological innovator credited by Aristotle with introducing the individual actor to drama, which had previously been confined to the choral recital of mythology. It was Sophocles who increased the number of individuals all the way to 4!
Iota is for isos, meaning equal: isosceles triangles, which have two equal sides; isotopes ("equal places"), elements that share the same space on the periodic table; isobars, lines on a weather map denoting areas of the same barometric pressure.
Kappa is for kentron, a pointed object, from which "center", as of a circle when you draw it with a peg and a piece of string. Not to be confused with the Latin cingere, to cinch, from which we get the more specialized meaning of "center" as in the curved wood that supports a stone arch as it is being built. In the 5th c BC, Pythagoras said everything in the sky spun around a central fire. In the 3rd C BC, Aristarchos said the earth and planets circled round the sun.
Lambda is for Logos, the "Word" of John 1. Actually "word" usually refers to epos, from which we get "epic" (originally told by the spoken word) or rhema, from which "rhetoric" (another kind of spoken word). Logos refers simultaneously to the outward expression of a concept, as opposed to a mere name, and to the actual concept itself, and is a combination of the thought and its verbal expression. It could be akin to the Latin ratio, meaning thought, as opposed to oratio, meaning the expression of thought. The logos is the whole sentence, the complete thought, or the power and process of reasoning itself. It refers to whatever is said: a fable, a story, a thing spoken of, a principle, or an explanation. It comes from the verb legein (to gather, select), which also gives us lexis, which refers both to words (as in "lexicon") and manners of speaking (as in "dialect").
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