I am stupid pls educate me. Were they actually poems?

  • Thomas_Dankara [any,comrade/them]
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    edit-2
    3 years ago

    The don’t rhyme very much, but maybe they did in their original languages.

    They often did rhyme in their original languages, yeah though your mileage may vary on the cultural standard for what constitutes rhyming. Sometimes words only rhyme in certain dialects. Sometimes these poems didn't rhyme, but instead exhibited similar features like consonance (same consonant sounds) or assonance (same vowel sounds) or alliteration (same starting sounds). You could be sure that there were certainly some kind of aesthetic choices going on with the words, even if it wasn't end-of-line rhyming.

    Also the rhymes aren't always end-line rhymes, but can sometimes be found at the beginnings and middles of lines.

    They do have rhythm, though.

    Yes, they maintain (mostly) consistent meters throughout. Iliad was dactylic hexameter in the original Greek, I've been told.