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               History 104A, October 3: RETURN EXAM & ROME-Two Faced!

 

               I did get to grade them.  It's not bad when I only have one set

 

          of exams.  I am giving them back.  I will comment a little later on

 

          them as we go along and explain as best I can what may have occurred

 

          and give you a good grade or a bad grade or a need work on a grade.

 

          Please keep a couple of things in mind.  You have three more to make

 

          up, two more?  Two more.  And then you've got the group meetings.  A

 

          number of people have not turned in their makeup papers for the last

 

          one.  The first one they can't do any longer.  And remember, that is

 

          one-fourth of your grade, and that makes a big difference in the grade

 

          that I should be getting.  This will help pull it up.  Translation,

 

          whatever you grade you got on this exam, I would basically triple it,

 

          add 100 points and divide by four to figure out what your grade would

 

          be for this semester?  Why?  Because the grades do not change

 

          dramatically from exam to exam.  The amazing part is grading them by

 

          social security number and then I see that people are getting the same

 

          grade, and then I begin to realize at least I'm consistent in my

 

          grading.  If I were doing it by name, you never know the impact.

 

          There are some changes and some people go way up and some people go

 

          way down.  The old coach statement -- don't let it go to your head --

 

          when you have a good grade; or the other element -- give it the

 

          college try -- just because you flunked with a zero.  Nobody flunked

 

          with a zero but there were two failures.  I'll talk more.  I'll let

 

          you people do the exercise since you're young.  You don't want me to

 

          collapse on the stairs.

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               Happy Ramadan whenever it starts for those that celebrate by not

 

          eating.  Happy Rosh Hashanah for new year for those who celebrate.

 

          Happy pre-Halloween.  This is your trick or treat -- never mind.  That

 

          was bad.  The grades were average which is sort of unusual for my

 

          grades candidly.  Either you get it or you don't so it a reverse curve

 

          with a lot of high grades and a lot of low grades.  Most of grades

 

          here were in the middle which means there's a good chance for

 

          improvement.  So that you understood the material, but generally meant

 

          that you didn't know how the write an exam night and my time spending

 

          what 20-30 minutes talking about certain rules and regulations for

 

          writing an exam.  I'm fairly sure I mentioned that I told you that

 

          it's kind of difficult to write a history exam without dates,

 

          timeframe, references.  And I would say very few of you actually

 

          through in timeframes or reference.  It is a history exam.  It

 

          certainly doesn't have to be exact, but you needed to put it in a

 

          timeframe.  If you're talking ancient Egypt, when are you talking.  If

 

          you're talking the Celts what part of Europe are they in?  We ran into

 

          a development of not getting a sense of when things were occurring.

 

          I'm going to go specifically through the questions more directly.

 

               The first rule I gave you -- read the question carefully.  Well,

 

          some of you did, but I was amazed how many of you left out sections of

 

          the question.  Some of it could have been time, but for many of you

 

          who took time afterwards, you still did the same thing.  For the

 

          take-home part of the that you came in to answer, a number of people

 

          left out India totally.  Now granted, the question in the textbook

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          from that chapter and it doesn't include India, but I threw in India

 

          because I felt it was a major area to cover and get it was not covered

 

          in some of the essay.  That meant that you didn't really search have

 

          research it out as far as you should have in preparing it at home.

 

          Most people didn't take the take home.  And then when you looked at

 

          the other ones you thought they were easier.  I also came across

 

          something that I thought was very interesting.  I don't remember which

 

          questions I have on-line, but from time to time and of course

 

          certainly the question in the group meeting question was -- would you

 

          prefer to live in die and Egypt or Mesopotamia?  I changed the dang

 

          thing for this exam.  I made it -- would you prefer to live?  And then

 

          would you prefer to live in Mesopotamia.  There were two sections.  I

 

          was amazed how many people simply took the first section and explained

 

          why they didn't want to live or die in Mesopotamia which was not my

 

          question, so you're not reading the question, you're making

 

          assumptions about it based either on your study or based on previous

 

          questions that you refer to.  And that definitely caused certain

 

          grades to drop.

 

               Let me explain one thing.  My handwriting is poor, like most

 

          doctors, so my prescription to you may not be readable.  However, one

 

          I will of course read it to you if need be.  I can't read my own

 

          handwriting all the time either.  Two, after I go over some of the

 

          questions with you and go over some of the things I expected, then you

 

          still would like me to comment further on your exams, I would suggest

 

          that you come by my office after class or during my office hours on

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          Tuesday and Thursday and I'll be happy to go through it more

 

          thoroughly with you specifically and prepare you for the next exam.  I

 

          grant that it's difficult sometimes to spell everything out, but the

 

          general errors that I have expressed and did impact the grades on a

 

          number of papers dramatically.  If one-fourth of the questions or

 

          one-fifth is asking about India, you've already dropped 25 percent if

 

          you don't cover it.  It's hard not to take that into account pause

 

          you're supposed to cover all elements.  Now, in a couple of place

 

          where is time was a factor and I realized it by looking at what

 

          happened, at that point, I really tried to judge and be fair by what

 

          you wrote at the beginning.  A few of you though -- and it became

 

          pretty obvious -- got tired by the end of the exams, even though you

 

          took time afterwards, I could tell by the marking of the red on the

 

          sheets when you went up to my office.  All of a sudden you started out

 

          great and then trickled down to a poor essay.  All that hurt.  That

 

          means that you need better conditioning.  You should start a

 

          conditioning routine, a few push ups and run a few miles and then

 

          maybe you would last longer.  It was a factor in a good five to 10

 

          exams where people simply petered out is the term.  Let's look at them

 

          more specifically.

 

               Explain why you would prefer to live and die in ancient Egypt.

 

          Now, contradict yourself and explain why you would prefer to live and

 

          die in Mesopotamia.  It's interesting even on the other question most

 

          people choose Egypt.  Actually, I would have preferred to live and die

 

          in Mesopotamia.  Now, that's unusual, maybe one person would have said

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          that that was their first choice.

 

          Q    Because you fear the Gods?

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  Because I fear the Gods?  I fear no one but my

 

          own God, that's myself.

 

          A    I think you're a glutton for punishment.

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  Masochistic.

 

          A    Yeah.

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  I don't know, maybe your right.  The fearing the

 

          Gods, I would have to deal with.  Give me a good reason.  Why do you

 

          think I would prefer to live and die in Mesopotamia, a serious one?  I

 

          don't think you were serious.

 

          A    Because when power was exchanged among civilization, when you

 

          were a serve or a serf class there was no upward or downward movement

 

          and when your leaders changed you don't have to go and die with them.

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  No.

 

          A    I was going to say you might want to prefer Mesopotamia because

 

          they don't -- I think they don't believe in the afterlife as far as

 

          like Egypt is concerned.

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  So why would I want to be in a place where I'm

 

          not concerned about an afterlife.

 

          A    Because they don't have to stress out about the their day to day

 

          life.

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  I think you're on the right track.  I'm not sure

 

          I would express it in that fashion, but that's okay.

 

               One, I like diversity.  And Egypt did not have diversity.  It was

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          basically a same people with a few Nubian slaves brought in.  I didn't

 

          realize how much I liked diversity until I taught at a university in

 

          the south for two and a half years.  When my oldest son was born in a

 

          hospital down there and everybody else had blond hair and blue eyes in

 

          the hospital because they didn't really allow African-Americans in, I

 

          think, and yet there's an African-American underdog community in the

 

          south in those years and of course that's many years fact.  The fact

 

          is that he had dark eyes and fairly dark skin.  He took after his

 

          mother and he stood out.  And then when I watched TV and saw nothing

 

          but whites on TV on the news and elsewhere, when I got to the Bay Area

 

          and saw the diversity, I realized how much I appreciated diversity

 

          having grown up in New York.  I don't like bland communities.

 

               Why else?  We said that as you expressed it, the sense of

 

          materialism, the sense of everyday life, and I'm doing this because

 

          again it was really lacking as to why people might have chosen it.  A

 

          few of you mentioned the materialism, but didn't explain it in its

 

          full sense.  The searching, the working, the drive or making your life

 

          better today, not looking for the pie in the sky, but leave that you

 

          can achieve mobility and work for this life is a major factor.  I

 

          believe that creativity comes from striving.  I believe in

 

          competition.  And I think all of that was open to more human

 

          development in Mesopotamia.  Granted, none of us would like the wars,

 

          the expansion, the different changes, but I could move from city to

 

          city and change cultures.  I would obtain a greater sense of wealth.

 

               Now negatives, sure but we didn't need to deal with the

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          negatives.  As far as dying is concerned?  In Mesopotamia there wasn't

 

          a sense of an afterlife, and therefore dieing in Mesopotamia was

 

          irrelevant if I had a good life.  Now, in Egypt, obviously most people

 

          chose Egypt for a large number of factors.  Although, I must say that

 

          one person I liked, identified that in ancient Egypt women had a

 

          greater sense of equality with the men and therefore women would

 

          achieve, could earn wealth, could own businesses at times and did.

 

          And even in Egypt you did have a few pharaohs that were female.

 

          Obviously they had to put on the false beard and act like they were

 

          men, but that's secondary to the fact that there was at least a near

 

          sense of equality.

 

               The other element in Egypt that didn't exist in Mesopotamia was

 

          the sense of feeling and interaction with men and women.  You could

 

          see it in the sculptures where they're holding hands and they're equal

 

          side by side.  So that sense of spirit might have been something more

 

          specific that you could have introduced.  I did get a kick out of the

 

          person who said he would prefer to live in Mesopotamia because women

 

          had their own air.  I thought that was a good choice.  I did identify

 

          to him or her on the paper that at least maybe forgetting a fact that

 

          in Egypt women's clothes could be seen through.  That was yours Peter?

 

          Yeah.  I figured the wise ass would do that.  Yet again, there is that

 

          you could have made an argument for whatever reason they didn't have

 

          to buy a lot of different clothes because the men only wore loin

 

          cloths and although they changed in height from time to time, it

 

          didn't mean that you had to have a big wardrobe and that saved money.

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          It's not so much you're right or wrong answer, it's you're showing me

 

          that you learned something from the class itself.  And sometimes it

 

          can be minuscule like that and other times it can it can wealth of the

 

          society.  You could identify the jewelry, the sculpture and gold, the

 

          silver, the work programs, the food, and many of those kinds of

 

          elements.  And of course I would have expected in Egypt for you to

 

          have developed the mummification, the afterlife, the search for an

 

          afterlife, the continuation and the differences perhaps in different

 

          periods of time.

 

               I also would have liked for a good essay paper to a perfect one,

 

          not just the date, but some mention of the Gods, who the Gods were,

 

          what they were like, et cetera.  Just introduced the fact that you

 

          picked up on some of that.  Somebody mentioned the two souls in Egypt.

 

          You could have thrown in a little more detail like the ba and the ka

 

          just to show me that you've got that extra little stuff to get an.

 

               Any more questions on that?

 

               C -- did ...?

 

               Again, reemphasized four things of the Greeks that I would have

 

          loved to have seen in the essay:  The belief in the fates of the God;

 

          the concept of the polis, the city state; the belief in hubris,

 

          excessive pride and the punishment, and the concept of perfection.

 

          That was fifth one that underlined all of that should have been

 

          introduced as well, and that was belief in individuality and

 

          tremendous respect for humankind.  The Greek Gods were human in a

 

          sense with all the problems foibles, conflicts, et cetera, that humans

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          have.  Again, perhaps that's why you were not to live up to those Gods

 

          as ideals, as images to follow.  And taking those especially the sense

 

          of individuality or polis, you needed to build on some of the elements

 

          of respect for individuality or the individual city states.  And you

 

          could have done that by the rocky elements of Egypt grows, the

 

          mountains that divided the communities and broke down the ability to

 

          unify because it became difficult moving from place to place or

 

          conquering other areas.  You could have dealt with the trade and the

 

          other contacts with other people to express the wealth of Athens and

 

          the development of the expansion of the olive oil but with that and

 

          the middle class and the high numbers of people who had wealth, the

 

          respect for individual actuality and the respect for achievement and

 

          perhaps the respect for perfection.  You could have dealt with the

 

          Mediterranean climate, the climates that fairly warm most of the year,

 

          similar to California, right here.  We've got fairly nice weather all

 

          year-round.  It creates a better sense of warmth and happiness and

 

          movement and individuality.  People express themselves more as

 

          individuals.  New Yorkers cover themselves up.  They hide what they

 

          really are.  Californians are in many ways more balanced shall we say.

 

          They don't have four personalities because of the four seasons --

 

          cold, hot, rainy, dripping, snow.

 

               And with the individuality you could have explained the

 

          development of the institution, certainly of democracy, certainly of

 

          the different forms of government.  You should have developed that

 

          with Sparta and the farming community and the conservatism that comes

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          out of the farming community.  And they're lack of contact with

 

          outside communities, races, peoples, where the Athenians, as seafaring

 

          peoples, understood and dealt with diversity even if they saw

 

          foreigners as barbarians.

 

               B.  I think I expressed some of the problems there are, but I

 

          think this major one that I found was there was a lot there to write.

 

          This should have taken a good bit of time considering you spent time

 

          on it.  The major problem was in dealing with the environmental

 

          factors.  The does talk about the challenges of the environment that

 

          help today develop political, social, cultural patterns and

 

          technologies.  And if you recall, I said it was benefit you

 

          dramatically if you define civilization and title those issues to the

 

          concept of civilization as well.  It was sort of my hint to the

 

          classes.  And many of you did not define civilization or develop it

 

          for that matter as part of that essay question.

 

               Any questions on the exams?  On the next exam?  Don't I get my

 

          usual question?  Is it comprehensive?  And my answer -- yes; all my

 

          exams are comprehensive.  The question is -- is it cumulative?  And

 

          the answer is -- it is not cumulative.  Translation, the exams are

 

          self-contained, although material from previous can be provided in the

 

          next exam, not required.  And therefore what we're going to start with

 

          today which basically is moving on to Rome and the Roman empire is

 

          going to be that through the early middle ages will be the main trust

 

          of exam two.

 

          Q    Is exam two going to be harder?

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               THE PROFESSOR:  I don't make them harder or easier.  It's going

 

          to be identical I hope in its approach with different questions.  Now,

 

          you know at least what to expect and I think that's useful and helpful

 

          in producing and writing papers.

 

          Q    Can you produce another take home question?

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  Yeah.  I decided to go back to it and so I will.

 

          A lot of this workbook is the world civilization.  And time limits how

 

          much we can do in class, so I give you the opportunity of learning it

 

          if you're interested.  If you take the take home.

 

          A    Uh-hum.

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  Okay.  Where to begin.

 

               Let's between with my title for the subject.

 

                                      Two Faced God:

 

               I am not one of those grand admirers of Rome.  Historically there

 

          have probably been more books written on Rome and Roman history than

 

          any other period in history, I think.  And I can understand that.  And

 

          we can talk about it.  And Rome continues with us.  There were many

 

          elements of it that I personally have problems with.  And that to a

 

          large extent is I think underlined by my title, the two faced God.

 

          Anybody here know what the two faced God was besides Kirshner?

 

          A    Janus.

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  And why is January taken from Janus?

 

          A    It's the beginning of the year.

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  And the year.  You're looking back to the

 

          previous year and looking ahead to the future year.  And so the two

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          faced God does reflect it.  In Egypt he -- yeah, right.  In Rome the

 

          two faced God reflected peace and war.  Janus had two faces.  One

 

          smiling and one grimacing.  One for war and one for peace.  I just

 

          realized I wore a peace symbol today.

 

          Q    How did you spell Janus?

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  J-A-N-U-S.

 

               The temple of Janus had its doors open during time of war and

 

          it's doors closed during time of peace, which never made any sense to

 

          me either.  You would think the doors should be closed during time of

 

          war.  But we also use the term two faced to refer to people who are

 

          two faced, say something and mean something else, speak with forked

 

          tongue, the serpent.  My feeling is that the Roman history generally

 

          reflects people who talked peace and were war like.  And even during

 

          the period of the so called P-A-X Pax Romana.  Perhaps I saw it more

 

          in my studies as study of P-O-X like smallpox.  So the culture of

 

          Rome.  The concept on Rome, the macho approach to life and death of

 

          the Romans limits my wimpy liking of them.  But I understand where

 

          it's coming from.  It's coming from a thousand years of existence.

 

          Roam lasted 1,000 years.  I always get a kick out of those who talked

 

          about the evil and decline of Rome and all of a sudden civilization

 

          went downhill and the United States is like Rome because we've got the

 

          same problems today which shows our immorality and we need a Messiah

 

          to rescue us from the evils of our nation.  We've been around 200, 300

 

          years, depending on how look at it and we can find the same problems

 

          in Rome for 500, 600 years.  Sure it took them a hell of a long time

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          to recline.  I have to admit that.  When is a civilization rising and

 

          declining.  We'll look at some of that in your study of Rome.

 

               Let me go back to sort of the foundation of Roman history.  As

 

          most of you remember, I spoke of Aeneas who was a Trojan who left Troy

 

          supposedly around 1200 with the fall of Troy.  And wound up at a city

 

          called Carthage.  Apparently there has been some discovery and

 

          development along the lines of finding Odysseus' original city which

 

          is Ithaca and there's been debate as to where Ithaca was.  They now

 

          feel that there was an islands that now a peninsula because it's

 

          filled in and it makes more sense finding the description from Homer's

 

          work the Odyssey.  As I indicated, Schliemann had -- and she mention

 

          Schliemann in the article -- had basically used the Iliad to find both

 

          Troy and Mycenae to identify that the description of Homer of those

 

          areas were fairly accurate and that has raised questions about why

 

          Ithaca wasn't where it was because the island that they had identified

 

          as where they thought Ithaca was didn't fit much of the description of

 

          the flatness and of course its location which is off the coast of

 

          where that peninsula is in southern Peloponnesia and Greece.

 

               Let's get back.  In any case, from the City of Troy, traveled

 

          through to Carthage where as I pointed out the story of Rome is

 

          spelled out in a major propaganda work by the poet Vergil in the

 

          Aeneid.  Do you know what other great work of literature Vergil

 

          appears?

 

          A    Dante.

 

               THE PROFESSOR:  Going through purgatory, Vergil becomes the guide

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          through the inferno in Dante.  It is a propaganda work to proceed the

 

          founding of Rome and to explain the wars with Carthage.  As you

 

          recall, Aeneas decided to reject Dido and not be encumbered by any

 

          female so that he could found the glory and greatness of an empire.

 

          And he sees when he goes down to hades in the Italian peninsula the

 

          founding of his great city and the Roman legions and the great future.

 

          The period of course somehow doesn't seem to jive because Carthage is

 

          founded in the 9th century in the 800 BCE which again makes me wonder

 

          about Velikovsky's dating of history.  Make this dark ages of Greece

 

          made more sense if it wasn't there.  And maybe the reason Homer was as

 

          accurate in his writing about geographical locations what is the -- he

 

          had lived within a short period of time from the Trojan war, that

 

          there hadn't been a 600 year difference at that time, but we can't

 

          validate any of that at this point.

 

               In any case, the City of Rome is founded around 753 BCE by two

 

          brothers played in the movies by Steve Reeves and Gordon School.  I

 

          only mention that because I mentioned Steve Reeves the other day.

 

          That is Romulus and Remus, two young boys who were placed in a raft

 

          when they were babies, the two brothers, twins.  Like Cain and Able.

 

          It's interesting the conflict stories in twin that is appear in other

 

          areas of history.  It's also interesting how often great heroes not

 

          only reject women but somehow or other as babies are orphaned and are

 

          placed in reed baskets and adopted by others and they float down

 

          rivers, and this occurs in cultures throughout the world including of

 

          course with Moses floating down the Nile River and being raised by

                                                                                                        15

 

          perhaps the royal family or people within the royal family.

 

               Romulus and Remus are raised by a she wolf, although the name

 

          Lydia or similar to that Lee da is the name for a she wolf and it may

 

          have been a woman with that name.  But the legend goes that the she

 

          wolf has seven tits not 8.  You see that's another question about

 

          history.  How come everything is balanced?  We don't have animals with

 

          seven tits.  They have to have 8 or 6 or 2, whatever the animal is.

 

          And based on that, the difference is that it's reflective supposedly

 

          of the seven hills that is going to create the City of Rome or

 

          hills around the City of Rome.

 

               They grow up as great warriors and have a series of a number of

 

          young men who join them as quote/unquote retainers.  They follow them.

 

          Usually again another one of those patterns in history.  Great leaders

 

          have 12 followers.  That's why I said there were going to be 12

 

          planets because how could the sun not have 12 planets around it and

 

          therefore develop its greatness?  I'll probably be gone when they're

 

          found, but some of you may be alive and just remember that somebody

 

          told you there were going to be 12 planets.

 

               As they begin their power, they decide that they want to conquer

 

          this wealthy area around the Tigris River and this city here, one of

 

          the hills.  They move in and they take over the city or at least the

 

          particular hill and at that point, a conflict breaking out between

 

          Romulus and Remus over the naming of the city.  They couldn't put it

 

          together.  The jealousies over how this great city was going to be

 

          named.  And Romulus kills Remus and names the city after himself --

                                                                                                        16

 

          Rome.  Now, we have a problem.  We have a city but you can't have the

 

          city or a community founded without women.  I mean you can have a city

 

          called Amazons, but men need to have women to reproduce as we said.

 

          There are no women.  Where are you going the get the women?  Well, one

 

          of the other patterns in pornography besides snake the issue of rape.

 

          Real men don't need women.  Real men rape women.  And the founding of

 

          Rome is built on pornography, again, identifying my negativity toward

 

          Rome.  On a nearby hill is a community of loving people with loving

 

          wives and loving daughters called the Sabines.  And Romulus and his

 

          retainers go forth and steal the women from the Sabines.  And

 

          following mythology, the men from the Sabines come to demand their

 

          women back.  And since these are real men, the Romans, the women

 

          decide they want to stay with their rapists, ha, ha, ha.  But that's

 

          the way pornography tends to create mythology.  And so now the Sabine

 

          women are now tied to the Roman men.  And that's the way the City of

 

          Rome was founded.

 

                                        ---oOo---