>why was every story in the ancient world written as a poem?
They weren't.

>was there some reason it all had to rhyme, or was that just the best way to kill time or something
Well in Homer's case the poetic rhythms would have helped to memorize the story, it all going back all the way to Proto-Indo European.

>did people writing non-fiction, like Thucydides and aristotle, write in some rhyming verse?
I don't believe Thucydides did but Aristotle or Plato might have.

Oral tradition. Few things written down, long long stories all had to be memorized. The rhymes helped make it much easier to remember.

Storytelling culture continued after writing systems developed, but slowly died out. Poetry is basically a dead artform now days. Dylan Thomas died in the 1950s and Robert Frost died in 1963. I don't know of any masters who have come after them. Poetry died the same death that painting and sculpture died when classical art was eradicated by Jewish relativism.

>>172
>eradicated by Jewish relativism
You sure it wasn't actually just that more people wanted to explore new and interesting art forms like film instead of poetry?

>>173

Which is why novel writing died out in favor of script writing.

Oh wait.

Are you sure you're not just making excuses for the people that are responsible for depriving us of oil painting, sculpture, and poetry?

Also:

>Film
>Art

Pick one.

>>174
No, I'm just trying to come up with other theories besides
>muh jewish boogeyman

>>175

Let me know when you come up with one.

There is one driving force behind the cultural relativism that has eradicated the classical arts. An entire civilization didn't just spontaneously lose interest in the arts, the entire art industry was perverted. Cultural relativists were promoted while classical artists were kept impoverished until they gave up. It was strangulated of its air supply and all the would-have-been masters went off and became other things instead because there was no future in real art with your people in charge.

Yes, it is the Jew. Only the Jew is to blame for the fate of the Arts which replaced painters with feminists queefing out menstrual blood onto canvas. Your people are to blame, Schlomo. But this is already a given. Let's get back to the topic of poetry. Ever-so-polite sage for off topic.

>>175
you could also think of it as lazyness and zones of comfort

webm related

>>176
>were kept impoverished
>because the gubmint buys propaganda I can't buy real art

Just because you're too much of a faggot to not get triggered by both /pol/ and /leftypol/ doesn't mean you should come shitpost here.

>>188

>Still no counter-argument

Let me know when you come up with a competing hypothesis to explain the rise of objectively (and often literally) shit relativist art.

>>168
>why was every story in the ancient world written as a poem?
Uhm, it wasn't (the first counterexample I can think of is the Bible). But, poetry was popular, sure, because it is easier to remember and more pleasant to the ear. This was very important, in a time when learning by heart and public readings of books were widespread, given the scarcity of written copies.

>was there some reason it all had to rhyme
For the record, classical Greek and Latin poems do not rhyme but occasionally. The verses are composed according to the length of syllables, so that e.g. an ideal epic hexameter is composed of six feet of three syllables, long-short-short, minus the last one (it's actually much more complex but you get the idea).

>did people writing non-fiction, like Thucydides and Aristotle, write in verse?
Some did, like, dunno, Nicander, and Lucretius (who compared his treatise in verse to a sweetened medicine). The opposite also happened, take for example Lucian of Samosata's novels.

>>176
Epic meme bruh, but this is a srs bread :^)

>>172
If you actually took the time to look and not whine about your antiquated ideology you'd find that Poetry and classical art is alive and well today. If you're gonna spout your shit all over this board like what happened to 8chan, kindly fuck off to to your containment board.

>>204
can you list any contemporary classical artists or poets? i am genuinely interested in seeing contemporary idealistic/Hellenistic sculptures and classical paintings.

>>210
I found this on the first page of startpage
http://www.figurativeartist.org/category/contemporary-figurative-sculpture/

Poetry isn't really my thing and tends to be more subjective than painting or sculpture

>>214
Great reaction images to be found on that blog.