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?
I apologise for the incoming off-topic… it’s just that you mentioned Latin works, I fucking love it.
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
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
Translation, copypasted from Wikipedia:
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):
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:
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.