How much time has passed since the fall of the Roman Empire?

We claim it was many centuries ago, but what if the Roman Empire fell in the mid 19th century and everything is a lie? Think about it. The oldest known living person is Misao Okawa, born March 5, 1898. Nobody's left to even know it was a lie. HOW CAN YOU PROVE IT!?! Maybe we're in a computer simulation made BY THE ROMANS!

Video Plans

• Larger Points
• Need to know: infinitive/2nd principal part
• Will learn: how to form and translate imperatives
• Method
• They will from imperatives given an infinitive and its definition (pos., neg.; sing., plural)
• They could use a pencil and paper to help them form and figure out the word, but it's not necessary.
• Details:
• 1 person: me! I might use a cat, but I will mostly just dress up myself for a second person.
• I'll do a vloggy explanation of the Latin and act out someone giving/receiving commands.
• I'll do it at home with my sister's camera.
• I'll use chairs/environmental things to demonstrate simple commands (e.g. sit), but very few props if any.
• I'll drastically change my clothes and possibly add a wig and a beard and/or 3D glasses to differentiate myself commanding and being commanded.
• I might do a song depending on how my musical composition and creativity play out.
• Effects
• Text
• A fake pausing of the video
• Basic transitions
• Possibly overlaying of 2 mes at once.
• I'll see what needs to be added while editing.

MCCXXXV Colores Grisei

In trying to find good works by Martial to use, I have found mostly not-so-good ones, and due to

that sad, sad fact, I have appropriately (Well, appropriate in the sense that it is fitting) titled this post for his 1,235 epigrams.

I'm pretty sure at this point that I would rather switch authors, because it seems like those few 

poems that are not bawdy-at-best are either bawdy-at-worst or complaints/come-backs about criticism he has received. There are others like them, but the two referencable^TM ones I found, from the page of translations I looked at before reaching the end and realizing there were not many good ones, were III:9 and I:91. III:9 was titled A Silent Critic, and it complained of how Cinna would criticize him, but nobody read Cinna's criticism, so he can't be a good judge of literature when his is so terrible. I:91 is titled The Critic, and it complains of how Laelius would criticize him, but he does not write anything himself. Martial invites Laelius to either stop criticizing his (Martial's) work or write his (Laelius's) own literature.

Basically, it comes down to the fact that I just don't like Martial's writing, since it tends to err away

from the side of witty satire and towards the side of porn and arguments that his porn is good. I'm sure there are a few clean ones that I didn't read, but I feel like I still wouldn't like them.

I also took a second to check out Juvenal to see if he would be any better, and while the content

seems more interesting, the heavily metaphoric nature of it seems kind of hard to follow without a good idea of what he's talking about already, which I'm sure most Roman Citizens had.

All in all, I've decided to move on and not use either of the satirical authors, and I've reached that 

decision the day before the deadline you gave me, to decide by Friday. Therefore, I think it would be fitting to try "something completely different."

On a Comedy of Errors and Plautus

William Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors is largely based on Plautus's works. He kept many things the same, but he also changed some things to more please his contemporary consumers and make it a somewhat original work.

The play is largely based on Plautus's The Brothers Menaechmus, taking the main ideas from it, but building upon them.

He borrowed the idea of having two identical twins from Syracuse who get split up at a young age, one being sent to a city beginning with 'E', and the other staying with a male relative. The differences here, of course are that in the original, one is raised by his grandfather in Syracuse because the father is dead, and the other goes to Epidamnus. In Shakespeare's play, the father (and mother) lives to raise one son, while the other son went to Ephesus.

Shakespeare also adds a twist in that there are twin slaves as well, one with each of the Syracusian merchant's sons.

Shakespeare also added a lot of Christianity to it. Plautus was probably not a Christian, seeing as, you know, Christ didn't exactly exist yet.

Shakespeare also based characters on a lot of Plautus's stock characters in his play, but went on to add character types that made more sense to his contemporaries, with very Christian roles.

Act 2 Photo Blog

Scene 1:

Menaechmus (Sosicles) and Messenio have just arrived in Epidamnus, searching for Menaechmus's long-last twin brother.

Scene 2:

Menaechmus (Sos.) is confused when the cook, Cylindrus, knows his name and claims to be preparing food for him.

Scene 3:

 Menaechmus thinks a scam is at play when the Erotium claims to know him and asks Messenio to hold his purse so it doesn't get stolen.

Act 1 Photo Blog

Scene 1:

Peniculus Squarepants gives the introduction to the play

Scene 2:

Enter Menaechmus. They talk about Menaechmus's scheme to steal his wife's dress.

Menaechmus meets the Erotium who enters through the door. Peniculus goes hardcore third wheel because he wants food.

Scene 4:

Erotium tells the cook to go buy food to cook.

Ordering Catullus's works

51: The poem that I think came first among Catullus's works has to be Catullus 51. He sees Lesbia for what I can only imagine was one of the first times and is immediately awe stricken by her. This could either be taken literally that he saw her for the first time and thought, "By Jove! She is so amazing; I must make her mine!," or it could be taken slightly metaphorically. This would entail that they had a closer encounter (If you know what I mean) than simply running into each other on the street, and that he fell in love with her because of that.
2: Next, I would say poem 2 came in. At this point, Lesbia is playing with her bird. I chose this to be metaphoric towards her husband. She plays with him and acts like she loves him, but Catullus "knows" that she does it all thinking about him. After all, who's the cunning linguist here?
83: Then, I'd say poem 83 comes along. Catullus is now pretty confident of what he "knew" in poem 2, so he thinks it must go without questioning that Lesbia is just bursting at the seems with love for him and isn't even hiding it that hard from her husband, but he's too stupid to notice. Maybe, maybe not. Probably not.
3: This is where I think poem 3 comes in. Lesbia's husband dies. "How dare you kill him," says Catullus. "Why would you do something to make my poor, poor Lesbia sad. Can't you see she's already sad enough not being with me every second of every day?" Maybe he wasn't quite so blatant, but that's basically what Catullus is feeling in that moment (The character Catullus, not the poet).
5, 7: I think poem 5 and 7 come in here (in that order). They both compliment one another (I imagine 7 to be an extension of 5) in that they ask Lesbia to kiss Catullus an unreasonable amount of times. This is probably at a point in time when Lesbia's husband is dead, so there's nothing holding back the love between Lesbia "and Catullus." Yep. Just Catullus. She's not loving anybody else.
70: I'd put Catullus 70 here. He suddenly realizes that Lesbia doesn't really love him. Maybe he asked for her to marry him and she declined, saying that it wan't like that or something, but he found out. Then he gets mad.
8: He's trying to hold it together now. He's going to pull through this. Obdura. Who else will love her, now anyway... wait. WHO ELSE WILL LOVE HER!?! Wait a second, I bet Catullus isn't her only lover!

Oh no you didn't!

75: He can't love her, but he can't not love her either. #SoTornRightNow
85: This is eating at him now. He can't even write more than 2 lines.
72: Now he's getting a bit more logical as time soothes his emotional scars. He rationalizes it. The thing that is driving him to her so much is nothing but lust, while he has lost the R-E-S-P-E-C-T he once had for her.
11: Catullus compares himself to a flower being pulled in by the plow that is Lesbia. She's not a kind person who has gently picked him from the soil. She's a heartless plow that ripped him out of the ground along with dozens of others she cares no more about.
87: I imagine that some time has passed (but not a lot, maybe a couple years) since 11 now. Catullus is looking back with pride. He loved her so much. What he doesn't mention is how much she didn't, almost as a sort of way of saying that he's over her and willing to move on and be the bigger man while she is a heartless scumbag. He doesn't say anything about what she is, but he implies it in a way that makes him seem nice still. Genius!
109: Now I imagine quite a bit of time has passed. He is looking back on it and wishes just for that moment that things had turned out differently. He wishes the gods could turn back time and make her statements of love truthful, not like what they were in 70. Alternatively, this could be directly after 70, in the moment, as a more lustful, "GODS, PLEASE MAKE HER LOVE ME!!!!!!!!!!!"

Off Topic:

Catullus: I can't help but think of this every
time I read his name anywhere.