h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Aha, chapter 2, and we're already getting 'needlessly messianic'....

Now we know where Moses was when the lights went out.

If you want Messianic, wait for chapter 7.

Oh, dear.

And this is the story why Moses came down from the mountain well rested and unable to eat even one bite for the rest of the day.

I was diligent about researching what all of my characters might have eaten, as my innkeeper needed to serve them things they'd be used to. No Twinkies or sloppy joes.

The story for Nov. 9 took the most work. Poor Richard has the delusion that he is Benjamin Franklin.

It's all in good fun, and aimed at entertaining anyone who reads it.

Ἀνερρίφθω κύβος ‎(Anerrhíphthō kúbos) is what the man said. If a Roman wanted to be fancy, he used Greek.

But the Greek is subjunctive, meaning, 'Let the die be cast!'

Which would be 'Alea iacta esset.'

Sorry, the parser butchered the Greek. I should have known better.

Anerriphtho kubos, it should have said.

I copied it from a reputable Internet source. It was a couple months ago, so I don't remember which one it was. Or maybe it was Google translate into Latin using "The die is cast." I'd like to blame Shakespeare for this, but he didn't cover this chapter of Caesar's life in his play. Getting inside Caesar's head using what Shakespeare thought he meant, and modern translations of what he said is enough of a headache!

That wasn't a criticism. It was an academic rabbit-chase. You'd said 'Alea iacta est' when he hadn't done it yet (It means 'the die has been cast'). So it would need to be in the subjunctive, anyway. While verifying that my memory hadn't failed me on the subjunctive of 'esse', I found a scholarly discussion of the fact that 'Alea iacta est' was Suetonius getting it wrong, or somebody getting Suetonius wrong...anyway, it should have been subjunctive in the first place, was what they said, in the sense of 'Let it be', and he said it in Greek, etc.

But don't worry. Just as 99% of readers would think whatever Shakespeare wrote was something Caesar actually said rather than something Shakespeare made up, so 'Alea iacta est' is the usual phrase.

Thanks

Better men than I (Suetonius, for instance) have gotten it wrong . Is what we regard as history actually varying degrees of fiction anyway?

When it comes to classical historians, it's definitely more fiction than fact. Never trust them.

The "friends, Romans, countrymen" speech was not based on a verbatim transcript. Appian of Alexandria wrote a detailed account of the funeral, but he was writing it 150 years later. Antony showed the crowd Caesar's wounds, and this drove them crazy.

There's a link to Appian's account in this link:
https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/ce7mf6/do_we_have_any_idea_of_what_marc_antony_actually/

Not that Caesar's death was covered in my story....

Caught up!

Glad to hear it. On Nov. 20, Jean Valjean will visit the Inn with Cosette. Javert will not be far behind. The Phantom of the Opera and the Hunchback of Notre Dame will be accessible through underground tunnels (never mind the temporal differences ).

This is quite a jumble of times and places.

Basically, these people seem to be lost in a maze of literature of varying qualities. It's enough to give them whiplash.

It makes me wonder just how an actual knight would have reacted to the change in interpretations through the centuries, from the Prosa Lancelot through Don Quixote to Tennyson and Mark Twain down to the current movies...

Not to mention showing the original Beowulf that movie with Angelina Jolie.

Whiplash is a very accurate word for what they're going through. On November 30, everything will be tied together.

Will a gordian knot be required?