Talk:Verba volant, scripta manent

Unreferenced

The only reference was to a work that's searchable online and does not contain the proverb.[1] It was tagged in 2012 but not removed, so now there's a danger that online associations of Emperor Titus with this proverb derive from this article or a Wikipedia article in another language, so we can't use them as references for it. NebY (talk) 00:31, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Augustine?

Here is a 1731 mention by Count Nolegar Giatamor: "Es reflexion del Padre de las Sentencias San Augustin: Examinas, o homo (dice el citado Santo) examinas, o homo, cibum dum edis. cur non examinas verba dum loquetis? verba volant, & scripta manent ad perpetua rei memoriam." My Spanish is no good; is he really quoting Augustine? I tried looking in a 16th-century Sententiae of Augustine[2] but failed to find it, and of course Gitamor is a primary source for our purposes - certainly I don't have the scholarship to assess him. NebY (talk) 14:24, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Horace, Wiktionary

Wiktionary has six versions at wikt:vox audita perit, litera scripta manet:

vox audita perit, litera scripta manet

res audita perit, litera scripta manet

litera scripta manet, verbum ut inane perit

littera scripta manet, volat irrevocabile verbum

vox emissa volat, litera scripta manet

verba volant, scripta manent

but no citations. Horace warns against trusting others with your private opinions or secrets, "et semel emissum volat irrevocabile verbum", and once let loose, a (spoken) word takes flight irrevocably (Epistles XVIII 71).[3]Loeb if available to you This looks like a playful - or pointed - inversion of the sense we're used to, that the spoken word flies away / evaporates, and suggests to me that Horace is familiar with some verbum volat or verba volant saying. It might be a very old sentiment. NebY (talk) 15:04, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Or might it be more recent, from someone familiar with Horace? Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 17:26, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

I think it's marginally more plausible that the six variants and Horace share a common ancestral sentiment which Horace deliberately inverts than that the six variants all followed from but inverted Horace, but I'm no authority. I merely suggest being open to the possibility that someone familiar with early Latin literature might remember an instance before Horace. NebY (talk) 21:55, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

The first is quoted by William Caxton in his prologue to The Mirror of the World (1481, a translation of the encyclopedic L'Image du Monde: "COnsyderyng that wordes ben perisshing vayne. and forgete∣ful / And writynges duelle / and abyde per¦manen•/ as I rede. ¶Vox audita perit littera scripta manet ¶"[4]for an image of the page in his 1489 edition, NebY (talk) 15:49, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

All of which looks relevant, but the problem I see is that some of these look like variations on the same proverb, others like a similar but distinct proverb, and others midway between the two of them—I don't know how to deal with these, except perhaps to treat them as a continuum of related sayings, each of which may need to be addressed. And I'd be fine doing that in one article—it seems like a sensible thing to do—but I doubt my judgment here, and I'm not sure how to implement it. I feel out of my depth at this stage! P Aculeius (talk) 17:46, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

That's a nuisance; I'm definitely out of my depth! I think a section listing related sayings would be appropriate, if we have citeable sources for each saying's existence such as pre-2008 dictionaries of quotations. The Caxton quote might then serve as a secondary reference, but the Horace line and the mention of Augustine wouldn't do in their current state – I reported them as I found them only as hints that there may be, somewhere, WP:RSs that discuss them. NebY (talk) 18:19, 29 May 2023 (UTC)