A professor-friend of mine sends this most disordered but amusing account of students’ errors. Be sure to click through the jump to read the rest:

The syllabus of my “Western Heritage” course includes Homer’s Odyssey, Euripides’ Iphigenia, Plato’s Symposium, Virgil’s Aeneid, Apuleius’ Golden Ass, Augustine’s Confessions, a handful of Icelandic stories including Hrafnkel’s Saga, and two items concerning early Christianity in the British Isles — Bede’s Life of Saint Cuthbert and the anonymous Voyage of Saint Brendan. I lay much emphasis on the idea of order during the semester. The following snippets come from the final examination, which asks students to write an essay discussion the theme of order in the succession of books:
On Apuleius’ Golden Ass: “In 1517 Apuleius wrote The Golden Ass.” [The Golden Ass dates from the Sixties of the Second Century AD – Apuleius, its author, was almost exactly contemporary with the Emperor Marcus Aurelius.]
On Homer’s Odyssey: “In the Odessey, Odysseus expects a marvelous homecoming, is slowed down by various absticals, including the island of the cylcopese, and the plod of the suitors to kill Odysseus’ son, which escapes me.” [“Abstical” is a recurrent misspelling of obstacle; it shows up in many student essays every semester.]
On Homer’s Odyssey: “Odysseus kills the suitors after a lack of proper behavior, which happened again in Virgil’s The Aeneid, written roughly around the time of ca. 400 BC, in the fifth and fourth centuries. Along the way, Virgil is haulted by numerous things, like the stay of Dido in Carthage and hostilities on the land of which we now call Italy and Cecicilli. While in a fight with Tiresias, the death of Tiresias brings some order to the people.”
On Homer’s Odyssey, more or less: “Most of Athens took place in the Labronze age after time emerged again, giving rise to Plato. But first Homer had to write down his Odissy in the alphabet, which The Golden Ass would also use in telling the story of Lucious.” [In this essay, the term “the Labronze age” occurs a half a dozen times.]
On Euripides’ Iphigenia: “The Greeks were told by the gods that Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia would need to be sacrificed in order for the winds to blow. After Iphigenia was sacrificed and the winds were blowing again allowing them to continue on to Troy order began to be restored because the Greeks saw their experience with disorder was for a reason and they must trust their leaders and things will be fine in the end.”
On Apuleius’ Golden Ass: “Disorder was also present in Apuleius’ novel The Golden Ass. This was where Lucius was a young man who lived in the Byzantine Empire. Lucius was about to be forced to have sex with a donkey in front of people. Fortunately he was fond of his own horse and was saved.” [In case anyone is in doubt, neither Apuleius the author nor Lucius his protagonist had anything to do with the Byzantine Empire, which did not exist until four or five hundred years after Apuleius’ death.]
On Hrafnkel’s Saga: “Hrafnkel’s Saga of the tenth century was written in 1839, the same year as The Voyage of Saint Brendan.” [Often I can explain a student’s mistake based on a misprision of something that I have said during lecture – but in this case the bizarre date is inexplicable.]
On Apuleius’ Golden Ass: “The story of Lucious, wrote in the second of two centuries AD, has gluttony and also sluttony.” [When students misname Apuleius’ protagonist in typed documents, I guess that it results from automatic spelling correction in the word processing program; but this misspelling comes from a handwritten essay composed in class on the occasion of the final exam.]
Introductory paragraph for an essay: “Literature is the key foundation for all types of literacy. Without literacy there would be no means of proper communication.”
On Hrafnkel’s Saga: “It is feudalism that causes chaos and halts the further progression of progress.”
On Hrafnkel’s Saga: “Hrafnkel was a great leader because he was understanding and treated animals with kindness as well. He also knew how to kill which was important for a leader.”
On Homer’s Odyssey: “By examining the books read this semester, I can flush out several quotes. In the first book studied, the Odyssey, by Homer, we examine how our hero, Odysseus is on his way home after saving Troy.”
On the Vikings generally: “During the ice ages the Vikings diminished and then evaporated.”
On Virgil’s Aeneid: “Had Aeneas disobeyed [the gods] and stayed in Carthage, he would have never gone on to win the Trojan war, and the country of Italy would not exist. After death, no progress was made on Dido’s part.”
On Hrafnkel’s Saga: “Thorbjorn rounded up a posse that hacked Hrafnkel to death eventually leaving him tortured. This showed their uncivilized erges.”
On Hrafnkel’s Saga: “Anonymous is the author of Hrafnkel’s Saga but which is never named, showing how weak he was when compared with Homer who was named.”