The Simpsons: The Father, the Son and the Holy Guest Star

This isn't really a full post, but I just caught this episode on TV and was equal parts amused and reduced to tearing my hair out. In this episode, for reasons unknown to me because I'd stepped into the other room, Bart goes to Catholic school and Bart and Homer nearly join the Catholic Church. I'm going to ignore the digs at my religion (some fair, some less so) because the point is, there were a couple of shout-outs to Classics popped in to the episode.

Bart is initially not impressed by Catholic school, but a young priest gets him interested by showing him a comic book about Lives of the Saints, in particular an issue telling the story of Saint Sebastian, who was killed by a sort of ancient firing squad (using arrows) during the persecutions of Diocletian. In Bart's mind, we see Sebastian burst all the arrows out of his body and back into the Roman soldiers who've just executed him. As one soldier lies dying, he sobs regretfully 'I wish I'd gone to more orgies!'. Ah, the popular view of Roman history It's just a long list of Christian martyrdoms and orgies.

Later, at dinner, Bart starts to say Grace in Latin (he gets as far as 'In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit') and Homer wants to know what on earth he's saying. Lisa tells him it's Latin, but then, for reasons passing understanding, elaborates by claiming that Latin is the language of Plutarch, who wrote Lives of great Romans. Er, what??! Plutarch wrote in Greek and he wrote Lives of both Greeks and Romans! Why choose Plutarch as an example anyway - he's hardly the best known ancient author around (he maybe was in the medieval or early modern period, but not now). Why not use Caesar, or Virgil, or Tacitus, or Ovid, or, well, anyone better known who actually wrote in Latin?! If you want an imperial biographer, why not name-check Suetonius?

I assume one of two things has happened. One possibility is that a writer for The Simpsons has recently read some Plutarch, enjoyed it, and wanted to get it in there without realising that Plutarch wrote in Greek, which is understandable if all you've read is an English translation of some of the Roman Lives. If this is what happened, then they are forgiven. It hardly matters what one line in one episode of The Simpsons says about Plutarch, this won't destroy classical research as we know it and might increase interest (though, thanks to Clueless, I did spend years thinking Spartacus was called 'Sparatacus'...). On the other hand, this could be the result of sloppy research, of a Google search and a quick look on Wikipedia without properly reading it, or reading an inaccurate Wikipedia article. This is more annoying, not because it really matters what The Simpsons says, but because I have a feeling this is what some students do. I've received some first year essays with some odd basic historical errors in them - a common one a few years ago was to think that Cleopatra had written an autobiography, which I eventually traced to a very old novel on Google Books. Sloppy research leads to silly mistakes just like this, which is probably why it bothers me so much when I see it on a TV programme!

And now I await an onslaught of comments telling me to chill, get a life and stop stressing so much about a TV programme...