Alia Scaena Montii Pythonis

Another Life of Brian Clip

It appears I desperately need to watch The Life of Brian again. Not only because I'm an older, wiser, sillier Python fan than I was in my youth when I first saw the film, but because there may be more sketches that I can use in my Latin classroom.
This one is perhaps not as laugh out loud funny as the first clip I've posted, but it might be more useful. This clip could be used as an opening to a discussion of the expansion of the Roman empire in terms of cultural history. In the clip the would be rebels cite all the improvements brought by Roman rule. Thus we can discuss how much the Romans changed every day life for people in the colonies and provinces.
We also have start thinking about how we know what we know. Is it all from the Roman perspective? Do we have to throw away all Roman sources because of the bias? How do we read the Latin critically so that we can get all we can from the text without forgetting the agenda of the author? We as teachers should also do our best to point the way to other sources, archaeological studies for example, and let the artifacts be the voice for people when we can no longer read their texts.
The next step of course, that is if we've all mastered our gerundives and ablative absolutes and have the time I guess, is to think how to compare it with colonialism as it's covered in a European history class or even colonialism today. I know it's off track for a Latin class, but people learn best when they anchor new material to information they already know or are currently learning.