Chapter 17
Errors of History The following list of curious errors of history is taken from Conklin's Vest Pocket Argument Settler. William Tell was a myth. Coriolanus never allowed his mother to intercede for Rome. Blondel the Harper did not discover the prison in which Richard I was confined. Nero was not a monster. He did not kill his mother, nor fiddle over burning Rome.
Alfred never allowed the cakes to burn, nor ventured into the Danish camp disguised as a minstrel. Fair Rosamond was not poisoned by Queen Eleanor, but died in the odor of sanctity in the convent of Godstow. The Duke of Wellington at Waterloo never uttered the famous words, Up guards and at them. Charles Kingsley gave up his chair of modern history at Oxford because he said he considered history largely a lie. Chemists have proved that vinegar will not
dissolve pearls nor cleave rocks in spite of the fabled exploits of Cleopatra and Hannibal. Charles IX did not fire upon the Huguenots with an archiboose from the window of the Louvre during the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The siege of Troy is largely a myth, even according to Homer's own account. Helen must have been sixty years old when Paris fell in love with her. The crew of Le Vengueur, instead of going down with the cry of Viva la Republiq, shrieked for
help. The number of Xerxes' army has been grossly exaggerated, and it was not stopped at Thermopylae by three hundred Spartans, but seven thousand, or even, as some authorities compute, twelve thousand. The Abbe Edgeworth frankly acknowledged to Lord Holland that he had never made the famous invocation to Louis XVI on the scaffold, son of St. Louis, ascend to heaven. Philip VI, flying from the field of Crecy and challenged late at night before the gates of the castle of Blois, did not
cry out, It is the fortune of France. What he really said was, Open, open, it is the unfortunate king of France. Voltaire, on being asked where he had heard the story, that when the French became masters of Constantinople in 1204, they danced with the women in the sanctuary of the Church of Santa Sofia, replied calmly, Nowhere, it is a frolic of my imagination. There is no evidence that Romulus ever lived, that Tarquin outraged Lucretia, that Brutus shamed idiocy and condemned
his sons to death, that Mucius Scavola thrust his hand into the fire, that Cloelia swam the Tiber, that Horatius defended a bridge against an army. Esperanto. Some years ago several educators attempted to develop an international language, to be used by the speaking and writing world at large. This auxiliary language is made from the roots of other languages, including the Latin. Its pronunciation is wholly phonetic. Theoretically, at least, it has tremendous
advantages, for should it be generally adopted by the civilized nations, who would undoubtedly retain their native language, there would be a common basis for international communication, and people could get together socially and otherwise without being linguists. The growth of Esperanto is slow, although encouraged by many educators, it is problematical whether or not it will make sufficient strides to be generally accepted. It has its faults and it is quite
probable that, if an international language or auxiliary language is to be obtained, some other form of common speech will take its place, or Esperanto may be changed, modified, or enlarged, so as to be more acceptable. Civilization, however, demands a universal language, one which will eventually take the place of all modern languages, the present languages to be relegated to the dead class, but natural conditions, association, and patriotism, or the semblance of them, will
undoubtedly make it extremely difficult to introduce any other form of speech or of writing which would interfere with native tongues. End of section 17.
