It always looked so weird to me, like, who not just read the Bible like a proper book instead of having all of those numbering?
I guess it’s because it makes easy to find some specific line? But that is from an academic perspective instead of something you would put in a faith book?
When did that started and why they put all the numbering?
I apologise for the incoming off-topic… it’s just that you mentioned Latin works, I fucking love it.
It’s less that they “hated writing normally”, and more that texts were made for a specific purpose and target audience, and the ones written “normally” didn’t catch much attention. But they do exist - and we have surviving counter-examples, like
But not even for poetry the Romans used wacky rhyming schemes. Rhymes in Latin sound boring, because most words will end with a handful of sounds - it’s too easy to pick a word that rhymes with another. Instead they did some fancy stuff with the metrics, capitalising on short vs. long syllables to create aesthetic effects. I’ll exemplify it with one of my favourite poems. Bolded syllables are long, the others are short:
Catullus V
Translation, copypasted from Wikipedia:
All verses have exactly 11 metric syllables, even if a few of them require you to elide an ⟨e⟩ before another vowel. Note the general pattern (L = long, S = short):
Why “most”? Because there are exceptions. And they’re likely there because the author was playing with the rhythm alongside what the “lyric I” is saying:
You’ll also see this sort of attention to the metric foot in other Roman works, like the Aeneid; except that the effect that Virgil was seeking was completely different from Catullus above, it was more like a “shut up, I’m going to tell you something important and profound”. But still no rhymes.
This is right on topic!!! I love you for knowing these things :)
I think we read Cicero’s De Republica and I remember Louden speaking about the music of the spheres. It tore me up to think that thousands of years ago (despite being geocentric and not knowing about the vacuum of space) someone might’ve had the insight to know about the sounds of the early universe.
Here is black hole making funny noises, not the ethereal sounds we were promised but nonetheless sound ooOoOo
And I do remember Louden saying exactly that! That the narrator gave a sense of somber importance where the audience is expected to listen with great concern as we’re about to listen a great tale of a great man and what he did to anger the gods so.
We drew many comparisons but I think I remember one being that the story opens like that in the Odyssey I think? Or maybe one of Eurepedes or Sophocles plays where they use muses and a chorus kind of as an “audience” of sorts to demonstrate the seriousness and invested interest of the public.
I’m obviously not as well versed (pun intended) as you are but it was great to talk about this once again. I might give De Bello Gallico a read since it’s just a report, nothing with too much allegory, being I can’t ask my long deceased professor questions.
Any preferred translations? All I have is Latimore translations for the texts I’ve mentioned hahahaha
Even tying sound with movement, on itself, is surprisingly insightful. If they thought that Earth didn’t make a sound because it was fixed, this means that they were aware that movement creates sound. (Later on we’d discover that sound is movement.)
I’m a bit clueless on Greek but I gave it a check, and it was the Odyssey indeed - the “lyric I” starts right off the bat asking the Muse about Odysseus. And since Virgil crafted the Aeneid as a continuation of the Odyssey, he most likely took a lot of the poetic resources from it, kind of like a fan game ripping off assets from the original.
Note however that Ancient Greek poetry had another resource at hand, that Latin didn’t - tone. And the authors of the past used it quite a bit, so the poem had a melody by itself, by just reading it aloud. Like this:
Those are the two first verses of the Odyssey. Here H/bold = rising or high, L/italics = low or falling, and dash/unmarked = unstressed.
I usually follow it in Portuguese (my L1), so I can’t help you much with that. That said I’d recommend you to avoid translations flowering the text too much (it goes against the “spirit” of the text), or insistently keeping Latin word order intact (e.g. “Gallia is wholly divided in parts three” or junk like this, it sounds awful in English).
For the Odyssey the nearest in spirit that you’ll get in Latin would be the already mentioned Aeneid. Past that you’d probably need to either go back to Greek works (like Argonautica) or even modern languages (like Os Lusíadas, same “we’re out, to the unknown world, to do something great” vibe).
Things like the Golden Ass are easier to find, though. Anything Plautus will give you a good laugh: Aulularia (The Pot of Gold), Miles Gloriosus (The Proud Soldier), Bacchides. Often there are “moral messages” in them but they’re mostly slapstick comedy.
You might also like some of Catullus’ poems. The one from my example is well-behaved, but check poems 16, 39, 58 and 84 for some fun. 16 in special is quoted often due to the profanity.
I often compare Martial’s Epigrams to the Roman version of shitposting.
Or other readings you might think I’d enjoy? I think Odyssey was my absolute favorite, but I’m also a Golden Ass enjoyer of sorts as well.