You’ll have to laugh – although such intellectual disorder is not really a laughing matter – at the following student errors on a final exam sent to me by an English professor at a branch of SUNY:

  • “Athene helps Telemachus and Odysseus to be reunited and restore order to Troy. This all took place around 450 B.C. but it was not written down until 800 B.C.”
  • “Much like Odyssus Augustine, who at one time was reared as a saint in Hippo, is tempted by pretty women as well as by a pear tree. But later he loses his self-control problem and converts into a Christian.”
  • “Odysseus, the main character, though having the hand of Venus (Venus-Isis) right on his side, is faced with much despair when he has to leave his wife and sons behind before he goes on many ‘adventures’ and encounters things. He defeats the Cyclopse after barely being eaten and meets Nausicaa while naked then stumbling over Calypso who holds him prisoner and gives him all of the winds.”
  • “Beginning with Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’ written down around 800 BC, when infact the events took place in the 4th century. There are many examples of order, tragedy, and some triumph.”
  • “A large wooden horse is brought by Aeneas from Troy, which Queen Dido thinks is a sign of appreciation. When the wooden horse is opened up and a number of Greek soldiers jump out, Dido is in shock. Thankfully, Aeneas and his men show up and promise to restore her disorder.”
  • “In Homer’s Odyssey while Odyssus is gone for ten years trying to get home from Calypso’s isle about 700 B.C. and enduring the many abstacles he faces along the way, the entire time’s he’s trying to restore order with in his selfs life.”
  • “The Odessy, written down around 800 B.C., its events are said to actually take place around 500 B.C.”

The exasperated professor comments:

What really gets me is the chronological befuddlement of so many of those enrolled in my class, for whom Colin McEvedy’s New Penguin Atlas of Ancient History was a mandatory text required in class at every class-meeting — to which I constantly referred. One would think that they would notice that the dates count down until 1 A.D. and then count up. But this would imply that they actually glanced now and then at the Atlas.