09/10/2021 17:52
Clarín.com
International
Updated 9/10/2021 5:52 PM
Study of a little-known text
written in ancient Greek
shows that the forerunner of all modern poetry and song was already in use in the second century AD,
300 years earlier than thought.
In its shorter version, the anonymous four-line poem reads, "They say what they like; let them say it; I don't care."
Other versions extend with:
"Go ahead, love me, it does you good."
Experimental poetry became popular throughout the
Eastern Roman Empire
and survives because, in addition to being probably shared orally, it has been found inscribed on twenty precious stones and as graphite in classical ruins excavated in Cartagena.
When comparing all known examples for the first time, Cambridge professor
Tim Whitmarsh
noted that the poem used
a different form of meter
than is generally found in ancient Greek poetry.
In addition to showing signs of the long and short syllables characteristic of traditional "quantitative" verse,
this text used stressed and unstressed syllables.
Cambridge classist Tim Whitmarsh, specialist in ancient Greek culture.
Until now,
"accented poetry" of this type was unknown before the fifth century
, when it began to be used in Byzantine Christian hymns.
Professor Whitmarsh says in a statement: "No specialized poets were needed to create this kind of musicalized language, and
the diction is very simple
, so this was a clearly democratizing form of literature. We have an exciting pop culture example that it lies beneath the surface of classical culture. "
The new study, published in
The Cambridge Classical Journal
, also suggests that this poem could represent a
"missing link"
between the lost world of ancient oral poetry and Mediterranean song, and the more modern forms we know today.
The poem, unmatched so far in the classical world, consists of verses of 4 syllables, with a strong accent on the first and weaker on the third.
This allows it to
fit into the rhythms of numerous pop and rock songs
, such as Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode".
Whitmarsh says, "We have known for a long time that
there was popular poetry in ancient Greek
, but much of what survives takes a form similar to traditional high poetics. This poem, on the other hand, points to a different and thriving culture, primarily oral, which fortunately for us in this case also found its way into a number of precious stones. "
When asked why the discovery had not been made earlier, Whitmarsh says: "These artifacts
have been studied in isolation.
One group of scholars studies gemstones, another group inscriptions. They have not been seriously studied before as literature. People who look at these pieces don't usually look for changes in the metric patterns. "
Whitmarsh hopes that scholars of the medieval period will be pleased: "It confirms what some medievalists had suspected, that the dominant form of
Byzantine verse
developed organically from changes that occurred in classical antiquity."