Tiberius movie+Gracchi notes

In today’s class we finished the movie on Tiberius Gracchus and Mr. Schick called a few people a pig-dog in German “schwine-hund” and in Chinese. Anyway, today’s portion of the movie, we saw the death of Tiberius Gracchus. He died because after his one year term as tribune, he tried to run for a re-election which was illegal because in Rome, you could only run for a political office again after ten years. On top of that, people like Octavius, tried to lie to the people to get them to believe that Tiberius was actually trying to declare himself king. This was most likely false information, however, he may have been getting a little power hungry, but he probably did not want to be king. We then got to taking notes on the overthrow of the republic. This discussion included the second half of the song, from “I can hear the brothers Gracchus…” to “Pax Romana is the word that brings the cheers…” After the notes, we were then given our next assignment, a research paper.  This paper, which is on Pax Romana, actually only needs to be 500 words, so it’s not like we are writing a term paper or anything.    

Rome Movie 2

Today’s Western Civilizations class brought us more of the Rome movie that we started to watch on Monday. In today’s portion, we picked up right where we left off on Monday with Tiberius’s battle in Spain. This was a difficult battle for Rome and it ultimately ended in there defeat. Actually the only reason that they made it out alive was because they sent Tiberius to negotiate with the enemy, after they refused to negotiate with their first peace envoy. Tiberius earned them a hero’s welcome back in Rome, since he was able to talk the enemy into letting them go. However, the senate was not so happy. They called for the punishment of Tiberius and the general, but then, one of the senate member’s saved Tiberius. Also, Tiberius’s mother said something that I would like to comment on, “I would like to be known as the mother of Tiberius Gracchus.” The funny thing about this is that she meant that she wants to be remembered as the mother of a great person. However, Tiberius could be the worst ruler human kind has ever known, and she would still be known as his mother.

Rome movie

Today’s Western, civilization class brought us another video to watch. This video I am guessing Mr. Schick is showing us because not only is it accurate and related to what we are learning, but it backed up what we read in the book. The movie starts by talking about the events of Tiberius Gracchus’s father’s death. In this we learn that he was an outstanding person. We were also educated on their “funeral” traditions for important people. In this tradition, they put the person on a throne in a sitting position and wax the eyes open to make it look as if the person can still see. Of course, they set up this display in a public area, so people can easily come by and pay their respects. It then moves on to cover the 3^rd Punic War. This illustrates how difficult it was for the Romans to scale the wall of Carthage and burn the city.

Study lecture

Today’s class was not all smiles for some us especially, since Mr. Schick lectured us about how the test was easier than last years and was meant to be a grade booster for those that were not doing well in the class. This speech did not entirely apply to me since I do well in school in general. Also, there are probably a number of students in the class (or even the school) that probably are or could be straight A/B students if they paid attention in class and learned to apply themselves. I am willing to bet that a majority of the students at John Carroll are hoping to get a well-paying job when they get older. To that I say “HA!” Everyone knows that you’ll only get hired to a job like that if you can manage decent grades. Though I really only got to stay for his lecture to us since I had to leave at 2:20 to go to North Hartford for a track meet.  

Rome test 1

Today we took our test, or “quest” as it has been called, on Rome. Going back to Mr. Schick’s squirrel analogy, I think I was the squirrel that leapt across the road safely rather than the squirrel that had no idea what was going on and got ran over. I also like Mr. Schick’s prediction of the totally obvious future, “Everyone will get an A, except those who don’t.” I know that I was one of these people, because there was only one question that I was unsure about. That question asked “How many people were in the Roman Senate?” I honestly had no idea, so I guessed 50, which seemed like a reasonable number. I know now that I got it wrong too, because after the test, I asked one of my friends in one of the other sections, and he told me that it was 300. Other than that the test was easy…I mean incredibly difficult. No, it actually wasn’t to terribly difficult If you paid any attention in class and to the song, since most of the questions came either directly from the song itself, or from notes that we took on the song.

Squirrels

Today in another exciting edition of Mr. Schick’s Western Civilization class, we finished going over “Rome” though I did not take notes on part of it since we would not be needing it for our test on Friday. Though, to be a bit more accurate, I think Mr. Schick said it would be more like half quiz/half test, which Nicolette called a quest (personally I like “quest” better than “tiz”). I also decided to stop putting information for the upcoming “quest” on my BLOG since we were informed that we will be unable to use our BLOGs as an aid on the “quest.” In order to try to encourage us to prepare for the “quest,” Mr. Schick told us that we could either be the squirrel that leaps across the road and up the tree and makes squirrel noises; or we can be squirrel that goes “What Punic Wars?” and gets run over. Also, Victoria mentioned that chipmunks are cute. Well, I would like to beg to disagree!!! They may be cute and cuddly on the outside, but in fact, they are horrible monsters if you have ever gone camping, since they try to take your food away from you. I have witnessed this with my own 2 eyes. On my trip to Maine this past summer, I saw one kid’s candy get broken into by those little rascals (which can be referred to as mini-bears).

Video Sharing

We started today’s class by sharing some of the video that we all made. To be honest, I think we all can agree that Victoria’s was by far the best that we saw today. In fact, after she went, nobody wanted to volunteer because they all knew that they could not top her performance. Thanks to mine, Mr. Schick will be calling Mr. Powell “Octavian” from now on. After we were tired of hearing “Rome,” we continued with our note taking. Today’s note’s included crucifixions (I just wrote down these notes even though we formally discussed this yesterday) and the wars that were Punic. We also talked about how the cavalry was more of a police force and the legion was more for fighting wars. The Punic Wars were fought between the Romans and the Phoenicians. In case you did not know the word Punic is an adjective for Phoenician. The Punic Army was led by Hannibal. His plan for attacking Rome would have been BRILLIANT, if they hadn’t insisted on using elephants as there means of transportation. I mean really, who actually thought that the elephants would actually have made it through the MOUNTAINS when they are something that you would see on a safari through the Sahara Desert!