Talk:Verba volant, scripta manent

Unreferenced
The only reference was to a work that's searchable online and does not contain the proverb. 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 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 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).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 ¶"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)