Examina Incredibilia Part II

[Pertinax]

First of all, a couple of words of explanation.

I taught history at a state institution for 36 years. Every blooper in these topics is absolutely genuine, in the sense that they were written by my students, not by me. Almost all of them are from the freshman level Western Civ course.

In all fairness, I should mention that only a minority of my students wrote anything which went into my Examina Incredibilia file. And by the time I had them in upper division classes, they almost never made a contribution.

If the student comes from a small town in the South, with a largely conservative religious background (Baptist, Methodist, Church of Christ), and with the football coach as his history teacher, he really has very little context into which he can feed the course material and make any sense of it. Hence, the screwed up associations found in these bloopers.

A.E. Houseman, in a review of a rival's critical edition of the works of Lucan, wrote that the rival was "a born blunderer, marked cross from the womb, and perverse," and further more, "his ignorance embraces many fields" including grammar, mythology, history, and geography.

Houseman's rival was not the only person whose ignorance embraces many fields, as these posts indicate.

Now, the preliminaries satisfied, let's see what my students had to say about the ancient Romans.

In Rome the Senators were chosen from the Particians, or wealthy class. The lower class were the Parbellians. Their form of government was a Rebalic [meaning Republic]. The Republic was a group of citizens that were the beginning of a primitive legislative body.

The social status was very hard to engage in.

The Senators made up the senex.

Classicism said that everybody was classed according to how they chose to be.

The Romans carried on a series of wars with Carthridge. These were called the Plutonic Wars, and helped the people to expand. In the Second Punic War, the invaders were led by Alaric, who was opposed by Cruncial. The story is told by Livy, an eptic writter.

Diocletian defeated Hannibal in the great naval battle.

Augustine of Hippo was a greek military commander who tried to capture or take as much of the Roman Empire as he could by the use of elephants.

Zama was one of the chief rulers of the Roman people

Rome completely inalated Carthage in the Punic Wars.

The Romans carried on georilla warfare against Hannable.

One of the officials of the Roman Republic was the Quaestor, who was the treachery official.

The offices of the Roman Republic were done in order, called the circus horronum.

Later problems arose, when the two classes clashed. The leader of the lower classes was Tiberius Gracchus, who was assissanited because of some of his trying to run for office illegely. Gracchus was killed in election rites. His brother Gaius institutied a program called pane et circensis which translates as penis and circus, also called bread and services.

Ti Gracchus was stabbed to death in a rage.

"bread and circuses" comes from a greek phrase. It means literally bread and circuses.

Gaius Gracchus institutied his own plan of feeding the poor by holding circuses and collecting the monry to buy food for the poor.

The first triumvirate was made up of Crassus, Caesar, and Leviticus.

Brutus and Cacuss assinated J. Ceasar.

Brutus struck the fatal stab.

Caesar was the most outstanding emperor of Rome during his rein.

Julius Ceasar had a golden tounge.

Then came the time of Saesor. Augustus was also known as Caesar, and was one of the men in the first trivanant. He was a great oriditor. He was assigned the providence of Gaul. One of his opponents was Cicero, who was one of the five successor of Augustus. These civil wars ended in the battle of Phillpi.

Cicero attended the University of Oxford.

Cicero's writing reveals the classical influence,

Cicero trtanslated Greek into the Latin speaking language.

episcopus was the literature written by the Romans

Octavius and Antonius were split east and west.

Cleopatra was born and raised somewhere in the far Eastern part of Western Europe. Ceasar was her first husband, then after he was killed I believe it was Charles who later discovered her, made her ruler of Egypt and took her Southward toward the ocean.

Cleopatra had a child be Casser.

Cleopatra was detrimental in the downfall of Mark Anthony.

The princeps means precepts, you intend to do something but you forgot.

Marcus Aurelius was a ruler of the Roman Empire after the time of Julius Caesar. He was the son of Octavius or the adopted son of Julius Caesar.

Boethius was the mother of Nero.

The five good emperors chose their predecessors.

One of the emperors who was most responsible for the fall of the empire was Comnutus.

Emperor Justinian was concerned with making his lands more intelligent and more pleasant to live in.

Justinian reunited the shores of the Roman Empire.

Justinian's architects learned how to build a square dome.

Justinian edified the laws.

Roman law was summarized in the Corpus Juris Civilis, also known as the Julius Corpus. It was a code of codex.

Corpus Juris Civilis was an idea that the Romans had pertaining to law. It stated that a man on trial should be judged by a jury of his peers and not by one man.

Corpus Juris Civilis is the Law of Life.

An achievement of Roman literature was the Aeneid, a writing showing one mans love of a girl.

An epic is a poem longer than a Tue-Thurs lecture period on a hot sunny summer day.

One of the biggest things that the Romans did that made a big change in everyone's life, especially in today's world, was building a road. A way traveling without going throw woods & getting lost.

[Cole Parker]

Man oh man! And just how does one go about grading a statement concerning how boring their lectures are on Tu and Th?

C

[Merkin]

Cicero trtanslated Greek into the Latin speaking language, thereby giving rise to the phrase, 'It's all Greek to me."