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?

    • dustyData@lemmy.world
      12·
      3 years ago

      On the point of pentameter and other ancient writing quirks. It’s because writing was expensive and not really that common. Ink, paper, quill. It all had to be painstakingly made by hand. Then all the training on reading and writing was a huge time investment as well. So it was relegated to the high classes. And slaves, they used slaves as scribes and basically as personal computers.

      So, most of culturally relevant works were actually poems. Lacking writing tools, long passages of texts are hard to memorize. But, poems in regular rhyme and accompanied by structured melodies are actually very easy to memorize. The Odyssey was one such a song.

      A master could teach his disciples the words and melody of extraordinarily long passages of information. Names, history, dates, myths, moral essays, by teaching the song. Performing the different passages several times allowed memorization and then they could perform this either for entertainment or for study and analysis via rethorical discussion. This oral tradition is how we have theater plays, stories and songs from 5 thousand years ago. We are pretty certain today that Homer didn’t wholly originally wrote the Illiad and the Odyssey. He belonged to this oral tradition and put it down into writing. Something that might have been seen as unnecessary at the time, for text was relegated to legal documents and treatises and court proceedings.

      EDIT: Here’s a practical demonstration. Write down the lyrics for Mr. Brightside. Chances are that you know them by heart.

        • lvxferre@lemmy.ml
          2·
          3 years 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.