Socrates vs. Shakespeare

[Integrating Editor]

While this question was entertaining, I am absolutely baffled that the writers assumed Socrates would be rapping in Latin. Not only was he Greek, not Italian or Roman, the Roman are of control was entirely contained in the Italian peninsula during his lifetime, so Socrates would have barely, if that, encountered Latin, let alone learned to speak it.

[Emiliana]

Heh, good catch.

[Marduk]

Trochees>Iambs.

Just sayin'.

[Marduk]

Also, does anyone other than English majors have opinions on metrical feet?

[M.O.D.A.Q.]

Whoops.

To be honest I was focusing more on the Pitbull part of this question when I answered it. I have strong feelings about Pitbull.

In further defense of Shakespeare, I'm pretty sure iambs and anapests are used more often in rap than trochees. Also, this.

[Integrating Editor]

The meter issue is the other part of the question that had me confused. For what it's worth, Anne, Certainly only says that "he'd probably be spitting out verses in trochaic tetrameter or some such," which seems very uncertain. That's good, because she was dead wrong. The great Greek and Roman epics are all written in dactylic hexameter (incidentally, an extremely hard meter to achieve in English), as explained over at Wikipedia. Whether that changes how good Socrates would be at rap is a good question, given that he never seems to have taken any interest in writing of any kind. I suppose I could leave a comment correcting things, but it adds nothing to the answer, and I really doubt anyone would use that question as a source of valid information about Greece and Rome.