Somehow I don't know that the professor who reviewed this material with us would be too shocked- I know one of the Americanists in the history dept is an SPN fan.

Cool! I know some fans of science fiction over in English, but I'm very much in the closet about SPN, even with them.

And I'm glad that this made sense, and worked for you. And now I really think you should write Sam taking Roman history at Stanford and having that moment of horrified recognition.