Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

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Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by dsimons »

This is an announcement for the Julius Civilis Classics Tournament, a tossups only side tournament consisting of questions about the Classics (cultures of ancient Greece and Rome) and written entirely by myself.

Purpose
This tournament was written with two audiences in mind: one is the general population of quiz bowl players, and the other is the people who attend the annual National Junior Classical League convention. Therefore, I tried to write the set so that it would be accessible to normal quiz bowl players but somewhat challenging to specialists. Also, in an attempt not to overwhelm people who may not know what quiz bowl is like today, virtually all of the questions are about five or six lines long in Times New Roman 10 pt. font before power-marking. The other consequence is that this tournament may skew a bit more difficult for quiz bowlers: the five line questions allowed me to write on things that have previously only been bonus parts, and there are things in this tournament that haven't come up in quiz bowl before. I also tried to pick some interesting answer lines and I incorporated a good bit of life/culture into the distribution, so keep this in mind.

Rounds and Distribution
The tournament consists of eight rounds: seven “normal” rounds and one finals round which is significantly harder. The distribution per round is as follows:

5 History (3 Roman/ 2 Greece)
5 Mythology
5 Literature (3 Roman/ 2 Greek)
2 Classical Art
1 Classical Geography and Monuments
2 Miscellaneous (composed mostly of Roman and Greek culture / daily life with a few other things mixed in)

Some notes:
-Roman history starts with the founding in 753 B.C. and goes until the fall of the Western Empire in 476 A.D., and Greece begins with the Archaic period and ends with its absorption into Rome.
-The distribution skews towards Rome rather than Greece because all convention attendees, myself included, are Latinists.

Tournament status
Except for a bit of question tweaking depending on how this tournament runs at NJCL, this tournament is done. I'm not traveling to any summer tournaments in August, but contact me or post here if you would be interested in running this set or have any questions.
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by munih10 »

It's cool that you wrote this, and I'd like to help you write other such tournaments in the future. I'm curious why you didn't include philosophy and religion in the distribution. Philosophy surely could fit into literature at times, but knowledge of Greco-Roman religion is imo a large oversight for NJCL.
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by rylltraka »

!!!!!

But seriously, I find this idea quite interesting (I had an idea for something similar but never got around to it) and I'd love to see what you've made of it.

Edit: What we know of Greco-Roman religion, which is certainly rather spotty, would easily fit into the categories of "Literature" (i.e., the Fasti, Macrobius' Saturnalia), Mythology, or "Daily Life" (Lares/Penates, festivals).
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by Cheynem »

I approve of this product.
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by Rufous-capped Thornbill »

Cheynem wrote:I approve of this product.
As do I. I'm not a classics player myself, but this is a really cool idea and I look forward to reading it at some point.
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

5 myth/5 lit, eh? I'm there.
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

I am so psyched for this.
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by Scipio »

I believe I would have an interest in this, yes.

I would like to point out the the Southern Section of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South is taking place around Halloween in Richmond. Is any quizbowl event occurring in the area at that time? If so, which one? If not, I wonder if VCU could be prevailed upon to host this then? I can already tell you that you'd get at least two participants, since I and Caius Stern are presenting at that conference.
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by Nick »

How many questions will be written in Latin?
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by dsimons »

To answer a couple of questions:

Along the lines of what Mik said, I didn't think there was a large enough distribution for Roman religion to warrant its own category, but there are some of those types of questions and they were incorporated into the mythology and general/culture distributions.

Philosophy was probably the biggest contribution from the classical world that I left out. I did this for a number of reasons, but mainly because philosophy isn't part of the material covered in academics at NJCL conventions, and I also don't consider myself well-enough versed in philosophy to write questions in that category.

To answer Nick, there are no questions written in Latin, but Latin or Greek terms are used somewhat freely. I also forgot to mention that each round features one "fun" question at the beginning with a ridiculous answer line. These don't count for points but will be counted as the tiebreaker question if needed.
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

This is super cool and yes and I want to play it.

To clarify, you're running this at this Junior Classical League thing as a side-event for people who love and specialize in knowledgey things, but may not have heard of quizbowl before? That's awesome. Hats off to you, Dallas, for doing this (and, who knows, possibly getting hundreds of high schoolers interested in starting up the game at their schools).
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by DumbJaques »

We could probably run this at Sun n Fun's UMD site in a few weeks. Also, I bet you could find some masochist to write you a handful of ancient philosophy tossups.
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

I'd love to play this. Paging Dominic Machado...
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by dmac587 »

I am there, wherever this is being played.
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by rylltraka »

I, personally, would like to know if this tournament is available and whether we could run it at our mirror of MO on Nov. 21st.
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by dsimons »

It is - shoot me an email at dallas.simons at gmail
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by Mike Bentley »

I'm interested in hearing this in Minnesota on Sunday. Might as well send me the packets ([email protected]) and if there's interest we'll find someone to read.
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by Cheynem »

This was really enjoyable. I appreciated the emphasis on Rome because it's SO MUCH BETTER than Greece.
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

I had a whole lot of fun playing this. Thanks, Dallas!
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by Flash Bomba »

Just wondering, how difficult was this tournament? The Junior Classical League I am in, as do various other JCLs at least in California, play a competition called Certamen, which is really horrible, mangled quiz bowl, and I have been looking around for an alternative after getting fed up with the question quality.
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by theMoMA »

Ukonvasara wrote:I had a whole lot of fun playing this. Thanks, Dallas!
Really, you guys played it Sunday? Damn.
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by Pilgrim »

Hey, can whoever who has the stats from the MO mirror of this (Donald I think) post them?
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by dtaylor4 »

Pilgrim wrote:Hey, can whoever who has the stats from the MO mirror of this (Donald I think) post them?
I kept score/read for all rounds save the really hard round, as I had to catch my bus.

It is attached:
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Classics.xlsx
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

Here are the stats in a somewhat less detailed but perhaps more accessible format; games played are in parentheses after the player's name:

Mike B. (4): 0/7/7, 8.75 ppg
Joe (7): 2/4/2, 8.57 ppg
Mike C. (7): 2/9/5, 13.57 ppg
Rob (7): 18/29/8, 74.29 ppg
Trevor (7): 13/28/24, 50.71 ppg
B (occasionally paying attention for all seven games): 1/0/0, 2.14 ppg
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by minusfive »

UToronto is looking to have this as a side event for our mirror of the Terrapin Invitational...If the writer/distributors could just send me a PM or an e-mail at Jordan "dot" palmer "at" utoronto "dot" ca, it'd be much appreciated.
Thanks,
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Re: Julius Civilis Classics Tournament

Post by kayli »

Hey, can I get a copy of this for my own perusal. I likely won't be traveling to any tournament where this will be mirrored (are there any mirrors of this left anyway?).
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