Could someone explain to me how Homer's hexameter is built, how does it work? (If possible, could someone quote verses of the Iliad, but with the Latin alphabet, rather than the Greek - I confess that I can not read the Greek alphabet).
Besides, how and why did the Greek epic-poetry apply such a long verse? Is not there the risk of the verse sound almost like prose?
I say this because of the fact that in today's Latin languages the longest metrical verse used has a maximum of 12 syllables. In porugues to this day the twelve-syllable verse is seen by some as very long and loose, very similar to prose, with many poets generally opting for the ten-syllable verse* (a stupid opinion, in my eyes, but nevertheless not uncommon) .
How then a poem that did not use rhymes, but only rhythm, used such a long measure (without the risk of just becoming someting like versified prose)? (Not that I see a flaw in this, in fact I believe that one of the keys to allowing more complex poetry is to amplify the metrical spectrum of the verse, enhancing the development of a more intricate and vast elaboration of ideas and images).
So, what are Homeric hexameters?
* There is a great advantage in English with its multiple short syllables: a ten-syllable verse in English is capable of much more content than a ten-syllable verse in French, Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian.
One long syllable, two short syllables. Two short syllables can be sometimes replaced by one long syllable. Pic related.
t. studied ancient Greek at school.
Isaac Bell
In fact it sounds more like prose than poetry
Grayson Lee
>t. someone who has read it in translation why does this board exist? to give free cancer I suppose
Isaiah White
OP here. Can you give some insight about the questions I made, please?
Joshua Watson
So Latin and Greek words have more syllables on average than even English, so there is not as much lexical information per line as you may imagine.
The rhythm of hexameter is also more complicated than that of most modern verses. It is called a hexameter because each line is six feet. A key distinction to remember is that hexameter is, unlike modern meters that derive their pattern from stress, quantitative, that is to say that the pattern is based on the length of the vowels.
Each line is nominally made up of six dactyls, a dactyl being a foot in the pattern long-short-short. However the pattern of two shorts can be freely substituted within a foot for one long syllable, so although it is called dactylic hexameter each line is really a combination of six dactyls and/or spondees (a spondee being the resultant foot from the substitution—long-long).
By the time the hexameter tradition was solidified in the time of Vergil, it was regular for a line to have the first four syllables be a free combination of dactyls and spondees, the fifth foot a dactyl, and the sixth a spondee. Homeric hexameters however are a bit freer, and one will often see fifth-foot spondees.
Because of this more demanding pattern, hexameter lines have to be carefully constructed, so you get a level of poeticism from the word order that comes from this. Although Latin and Greek both can convey a literal meaning in most any order of words, since the grammatical information comes from the words' endings and not their order, "good" prose had a particular expected word order that the demands of the meter would force the poet to break often, so the poems didn't appear particularly "prosey."
Added to this, in order to fit the meter, alternative forms and vocabulary choices are quite common in classical poetry, to the point that in Greek Homeric poetry (and most epic following in the tradition of Homer) was considered to be written in its own dialect separate from that of more quotidian prose and other poetic works like dramatic tragedy.
So there was a definite and apparent distinction between Greek prose and poetry.
Sorry if this is a bit scattered, let me know if you need more clarification.
Asher Morris
that was great :)
Have you studied alone of did you go for a classics course? I admire people who go for the classics.
Wonder what University did you went to (if you did)
Jayden White
>that was great :)
yeah, a wall of text means he knows what he is talking about and deserves a reddit gold
In reconstructed 4th century BC Attic pronunciation.
Isaac Nelson
why are you so jaded? upboat!
Luke Baker
>So Latin and Greek words have more syllables on average than even English, so there is not as much lexical information per line as you may imagine.
But what the OP said was just that: that in English the words are usually monosyllabic, so that more content can be inserted within a shorter, 10 line verse.
He then compares this to the fact that the verses of most romantic languages go at most up to a stretch of 12 syllables. As in such languages words are often polysyllabic, a 10-syllable line (the standard in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese) has almost no room for thought insertion and more detailed development of images and metaphors (not the case in English, because of the many one-syllable words).
The curious thing is that Latin and Greek, languages with polysyllabic words, did not have meters that were so short (in general) as the modern ones: they used far longer lines.
However, if this were attempted in modern Latin languages (longer lines, with 14, 16 syllables), the commentators would surely say that such verses were extremely prose-like, thus unpoetic, though they would never dream of saying that of classical meters.
Xavier Sullivan
What are some good books on Homer and the Homeic question (new ones, with new findings and acummulated scholarship)?
Pic related is qute good.
In it M.L. West puts forth five claims:
1. The Iliad is (almost entirely) the work of one poet. 2. He was not the poet of the Odyssey. 3. He was not called Homer. 4. He composed the Iliad with the aid of writing and over a long period. 5. He did not produce it in one continuous progression from Book One to Book Twenty-four.
He spends about fifty pages presenting the reasons for these claims. Whether one agrees with him or not (and I think he makes a strong case) it is a very enjoyable and thought-provoking read.
He follows his defense of these claims with a chapter on the early reception and the transmission of the text. This is followed by an over 300 page 'analytical commentary' of the Greek text.
>has almost no room for thought insertion and more detailed development of images and metaphors How many of these polysyllabic languages do you speak?
Jack Barnes
If you compare the sonnets of Camões, Petrarca, Dante and Quevedo (even in free-verse english translation), for example, with those of Shakespeare and John Donne and Keats, you will see that the English originals contain more information in each line, with rare exceptions.
It's not a question of those non-English poets beying worse or inferior, but simply a question of them having, in verses of ten poetic syllables, less space to create.
Nobody will be able to translate this sonnet - even without rhyme - using ten poetic syllable verses to either Portuguese, Spanish or Italian:
Full many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy; user permit the basest clouds to ride With ugly rack on his celestial face, And from the forlorn world his visage hide, Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace: Even so my sun one early morn did shine With all triumphant splendor on my brow; But out! alack! he was but one hour mine, The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now. Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth; Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.
To reproduce every word with metrical formality in a Romance language you will need at least 12 syllables.
Leo Cruz
The Alejandrino verse in Spanish is 14 syllabes long and is used mainly for epic poetry
Isaac Brooks
In Portuguese we have several pedants who say that the verse of 12 syllables is very long, very prose-lyke, without rhythm, very stretched and loose and boneless. For them the decassílabo is the superior verse, the verse of 10 syllables of Camões.
I wrote my first few plays in decassílabos, but from now on I'm going to start using the 12-syllable verse: it allows much more freedom; I feel I can work with more complex materials, detail my metaphors more, be bolder and more cerebral.
Two extra syllables make a world of difference.
Oliver Bailey
Want to add to this post by another user.
Chinese poetry is even terser, and impossible to render in English as such, not unless you butcher it, and even then that is not always possible.
牀前看月光 疑是地上霜 擧頭望山月 低頭思故郷
I wanted to run along this my attempt at rendering each line into 5-syllable English, as is the original Chinese, but I found the result too abhorrent to present in educational purposes, because what it would surely do, would be the opposite of that intent.
But, rest assured, this stuff is sublime. It is the real reason to learn Chinese.
Camden Walker
>to the point that in Greek Homeric poetry (and most epic following in the tradition of Homer) was considered to be written in its own dialect separate from that of more quotidian prose and other poetic works like dramatic tragedy. That isn't why Ionic Greek is considered its own dialect. It's because it is not an actual dialect anyone spoke, it incorporated elements from different Greek dialects of the time in order to have a compromised way of speaking that would be understood the the most Greek speaking people.
Charles Clark
Took Latin in secondary school, self studied Greek. I think the difference is that Latin and Greek have free word orders, so the ability to change the language to look less prosaic is more You're correct, I knew as I was writing it that it did not meet the most precise definition of accuracy. I was more trying to explain it to OP in a way that would be helpful to him, a la Wittgenstein's ladder.
Jeremiah Bennett
its called 'mandarin' lol
Xavier Rodriguez
>"Mandarin" in the 8th century Retard.
Jeremiah Jackson
mandarin is the main language of china, there are others , notably Cantonese, its not called chinese. Chinese means food
Chase Evans
Anyway, I mean 中文.
Michael Howard
Brad Pitt in Troy was the perfect 10/10
How I wish I could look like that
Jonathan Ross
you spelled suck cock wrong
Tyler Carter
What's the name of the poem, user?
Liam Brooks
C'mon, user. You can admire the beauty of a man's body without having lust for it.
I like girls and have sexual desire for them, but I honestly envy hot guys. I think my life would be much easier (my sexuali life, i mean) if I looked like Brad Pitt in Troy.
Elijah Powell
>Melodic Language (think Mandarin, they change pitch within words if you pay attention) >Long and Short vowels (see ) >Free Word order due to extensive grammatical cases
Also see: (Recreation take with a grain of salt)
Do not see modern academia: (Shill) (Chinese is shit tier t. Bloom)
Zachary Hughes
>Melodic Language (think Mandarin, they change pitch within words if you pay attention) So do hillbillies when they speak, that doesn't mean the way they speak is musical. Mandarin is a tonal language, Arabic is not. To set them side by side as if there were similar in that regard is disingenuous.
Landon Morales
What's the male counterpart to a jezebel? We might need some new pasta.
I don't know what is it like to read Chinese poetry in translation, as I had no interest in it until I already had a good grasp of most Chinese characters, and accidentally saw how good the Tang verses were--and even more surprisingly, how oddly accessible. Actually, I never learned Chinese; I learned Japanese. You can understand this even if you only learned Japanese, because classical Chinese is the basis of modern Japanese along with native Old Japanese.
If you want to get into 誌, I suggest first getting a grasp of the language in normal contexts, and then continuing to refine it through reading poetry--which, I stress, is very accessible once you know most of the characters.
Brody Butler
詩, sorry, wrong character. Doesn't make me look good, but eh. "誌" of a kind is probably why most get into Japanese, though.
Xavier Bell
Note that even in languages with free word order, certain word orders for prose and everyday conversation are strongly preferred over others.
I had a look at Iliad rendered in imitated hexameter in Russian by Gnedich and found it impossible to breeze through because of the syntax being all over the place with copious Old Slavic forms where they suited the meter. In addition, I could cleanly feel the rhythm of the hexameter, though I had to make the vowels a bit longer where Gnedich intended for a stressed vowel to be a long syllable (Russian has no long vowels).
Basically, it was the furthest thing away from prose.
Thomas Long
I rushed writing this post and made myself sound as if I have bad reading comprehension.
What I wanted to say was those preferred word orders, being normal, are easily understood. I can read and comprehend Russian translations of Cicero's orations, that apart from changing SOV to SVO in neutral phrases, preserve Cicero's word order, with minimal difficulty at full speed.
With poetry, this can get difficult, and I have to get conscious about the relation of words, since they are put in such unusual roles. So this is what makes poetry poetry.
For Americans there is probably no difference between Cicero's orations and Vergil's verse because both are syntactically complex and therefore equally impossible for the linguistic brain of the Anglo, but from the point of view of an inflectional IE language, Cicero is fairly normal sounding if ornate, and Vergil is outright convoluted for poetic effect.
Cameron Brooks
you might need to get a life you stupid fuck
David Wilson
Yeah I tried to make that point in my post. There's a reason most Latin comp textbooks use Ciceronian prose as their basis
Charles Fisher
You're right should have said tonal instead of melodic (Although melodic is fine)
Everything else in ur bost is shit though, the point in my mentioning is to recognize the difference in a tonal language of AncientGreek/Mandarin and toneless english. It is a fundemental part of those languages and if spoken monotone it would lead to ambiguity. This is particularly relevant to the creation of homeric poetry which is the discussion of this thread.
>Arabic is not ???????????? Relevancy -5 points
Ethan Harris
I'm going for this look.
Hitting the gym hard and putting jaw implants in a few months. Also, using tanning products.
Cant waint to jump from a 7.5/10 to a 10/10
Chase Reyes
I must have been tired and saw your pic and thought you were talking bout Arabic. However Greek is not a tonal language. It has a pitch accent but that is not the same thing as tones.
