Veronese Riddle

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Veronese Riddle
RE: Veronese Riddle

-JKP- > 01-09-2017, 09:02 PM

In the old Italian riddle, the a that looks like a u, and also the g, are similar to those found in Visigothic texts.

The i that is used as a ligature, and has a descender, is similar to those found in some of the 12th-century Lombardic texts.

And something I keep forgetting to mention... In Carolingian texts, the double-c is frequently used for "a" (I mentioned this previously, but what I forgot to note is that in Visigothic texts, the double-c sometimes represents "t").
RE: Veronese Riddle

-JKP- > 02-09-2017, 02:55 AM

I guess there's a tradition of these riddles. I came across another one...

De summo planus, sed non ego planus in imo,
Versor utrimque manu: diverso munere fungor.
Altera pars revocat, quidquid pars altera fecit.

I'll let you try to figure it out and hide the answer under a spoiler...

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My translation (note that my knowledge of Latin is very rudimentary):

The top flat, but not flat on the bottom,
Either way I am turned: different jobs I execute.
The other part revokes what the other has created.

When I first read it, I immediately thought of a pencil... because a pencil has a sharp end and a flat end (the eraser) and the eraser can remove what the pencil had written, but they didn't have pencils way back them (or even in the Middle Ages). So I was scratching my head because it didn't fit the description of a quill.

It turns out it's a reference to a stylus, rather than a quill, the kind used for writing on wax tablets. Some of them had a knob on the end to smooth out the wax if a mistake were made.
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RE: Veronese Riddle

RE: Veronese Riddle

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