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?

  • Lvxferre
    2•1 year ago

    I apologise for the incoming off-topic… it’s just that you mentioned Latin works, I fucking love it.

    Two, the Roman’s also hated writing normally, expect lines and wacky rhyming schemes.

    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

    • Caesar’s De Bello Gallico - he was being concise and clear. It’s a military report, not fancy pants poetry.
    • anything Cicero - he wrote a spaghetti, but he wasn’t writing something catchy-sounding so the masses would remember and follow it, it was mostly philosophy geared towards educated speakers. The content mattered more than the form.

    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
    1. Vī·uā·mus mea Les·bia, at·que a·mē·mus (LLLS LSLS SLL)
    2. rū·mō·rēs·que se·num se·uē·ri·ō·rum (LLLS SLSL SLL)
    3. om·nēs ū·ni·us aes·ti·mē·mus as·sis! (LLLS LLSL LLL)
    4. Sō·lēs oc·ci·de·re_et re·dī·re pos·sunt: (LLLS SLSL SLL)
    5. nō·bīs cum se·mel oc·ci·dit bre·uis lūx, (LLLS LLSL SLL)
    6. nox est per·pe·tua ū·na dor·mi·en·da. (LLLS SLSL SLS)
    7. Dā mī bā·si·a mīl·le, dein·de cen·tum, (LLLS SLSL SLL)
    8. dein mīl·le_al·te·ra, dein se·cun·da cen·tum, (LLLS SLSL SLL)
    9. dein·de_ūs·que_al·te·ra mīl·le, dein·de cen·tum. (LLLS SLSL SLL)
    10. Dein, cum mī·li·a mul·ta fē·ce·rī·mus, (LLLS SLSL SLL)
    11. con·tur·bā·bi·mus il·la, nē sci·ā·mus, (LLLS LLSL SLL)
    12. aut nē quis ma·lus in·ui·dē·re pos·sit, (LLLS LLSL SLL)
    13. cum tan·tum sci·at es·se bā·si·ō·rum. (LLLS LLSL SLL)

    Translation, copypasted from Wikipedia:

    1. Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love,
    2. and let us value all the rumors of
    3. more severe old men at only a penny!
    4. Suns are able to set and return:
    5. when once the short light has set for us
    6. one perpetual night must be slept by us.
    7. Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,
    8. then another thousand, then a second hundred,
    9. then immediately a thousand then a hundred.
    10. then, when we will have made many thousand kisses,
    11. we will throw them into confusion, lest we know,
    12. or lest anyone bad be able to envy
    13. when he knows there to be so many kisses.

    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):

    • All verses start with LLLS (spondee, then trochee).
    • Most verses follow it with either SLSL (two iambs) or LLSL (spondee, then iamb).
    • Most verses end in SLL (iamb, then a “dangling” long).

    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:

    • the first verse is trying to get Lesbia’s attention, so the middle uses SLSL (two trochees) because they sound faster and more playful.
    • the third verse ends with LLL (spondee+long). It’s like someone saying emphatically “screeeeww thooose guuuys”. It makes sense when you look at what the verse says - that the opinion of those old guys shouldn’t matter a single as/“penny”.
    • in the sixth verse, instead of a “dangling” long syllable, you got a short one. It ends abruptly - just like our lives, and that’s exactly what the verse talks about.

    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.

      • Lvxferre
        2•1 year ago

        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.)

        We drew many comparisons but I think I remember one being that the story opens like that in the Odyssey I think?

        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:

        1. ἄν·δρα μοι ἔν·νε·πε, μοῦ·σα, πο·λύ·τρο·πον, ὃς μά·λα πολ·λὰ (H - - H - - L - - H - - L H - - L)
        2. πλάγχ·θη, ἐ·πεὶ Τροί·ης ἱε·ρὸν πτο·λίε·θρον ἔ·περ·σεν (H - - L H - - L - H - H - -)

        Those are the two first verses of the Odyssey. Here H/bold = rising or high, L/italics = low or falling, and dash/unmarked = unstressed.

        Any preferred translations [for De Bello Gallico]? All I have is Latimore translations for the texts I’ve mentioned hahahaha

        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).

        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.

        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.