In a butterfly effect kind of sense, or in a direct consequences from the lack of ur-dolchstosslegende sense?
FWIW, Wikipedia attributes the ideas first recorded appearance to Suetonius (who was citing others, but not believing them).
I bet I'd have more textbook samples to sell to roving buyers.
Presumably we would put much more emphasis on Suetonious's later work, "Tiberius was like 'whaaaaaaat'"
We would still have Little Caesars pizza, but not in a way we could understand anymore.
Why would the contemporary world have been different whether Caesar's last words were "καὶ σὺ, τέκνον;", as reported by the ever unreliable Suetonius, or "FUCK ME THAT HURTS" (only in Latin or Greek - he was functionally bilingual), as is much more likely? In either case, the two senatorial factions would have duked it out to the end, and there's no reason the end would have been different.
Now if Brutus had changed his mind at the last minute and shouted "Hey, Gaius Julius! Mind yer back!", the short term outlook might have been a little different, but my guess is we'd still all be here typing in English.
This is obviously a veiled description of some recent sexual encounter of Nosflow's, but filling in the details is hard. He called out someone else's name in the throes of passion?
6 doesn't make a lot of sense, but it still seems like the most plausible explanation.
I like "Kafka and his precursors" a lot for thinking about cultural influence.
Another Borges piece I like about cultural influence is "The Witness," where he imagines the last living memory of Saxon idol worship in England, which hasn't been preserved or amplified.
For another example, the fragmentary story from a medieval chronicle that Shakespeare amplified into Hamlet.
6. Maybe Pseudo-Plutarch's invigorating description of the trial. Leftmost dude.
I like to imagine that it occurred to him that "Et tu, Brute" was a delightful false palindrome, and that a smile flickered across his face as he bled out.
6 "Surrender Dorothy!" is canonical.
(I should have dropped that into the Oz thread, I know.)
I will bet $5 that this is one of those "Furry With The Syringe On Top" set-ups. Any takers?
