In the student lexicon, ‘‘memorization’’ connotes unpleasant learning. Latin vocabulary must in student dialect be ‘‘memorized’’ instead of learned. This is delusional, because learning implies active use where memorization is the kind of passive rote learning we like to avoid because it tends to drive out real learning. As already noted, good Latin teachers discourage their students from memorizing English translations of language we want them to learn. That kind of memorization is part of the guerrilla action conducted by students against teachers willing to accept it as evidence of language skill. It is a form of cramming, instantly forgotten after the test. Good memorization is a powerful learning tool. Memorizing poems of Catullus in Latin for oral recitation promotes correct pronunciation, a feeling for the meter in which it is composed, an enriched understanding of vocabulary, and an appreciation for the natural cadences of Latin.
Besides being the mother of the Muses, memory is an intellectual muscle. In the Greek world of Euripides and Socrates, the Latin world of Cicero and Catullus, and once again in the Renaissance, it was a science as well as an art. People memorized for pleasure, not as an odious task (so perceived by undergraduates not involved in the arts). Plutarch records that the Syracusans were so fond of memorizing passages from Euripides that they freed Athenian captives who could recite what they remembered from his plays (Nic. 29.4).
In a college Catullus course, it will greatly advance familiarity with meter if you assign memorization of c. 1 Cui dono (hendecasyllabic) at the beginning and later c. 85 Odi et amo (elegiac couplet). Anyone can do this easily, and will benefit greatly from doing so, if only because these two poems tell so much of what Catullus is about and because they showcase two of his most-used meters. It will be a trophy achievement, a final proof to skeptics that they really know some Latin. As an option for much-needed extra credit, a needy student should be offered the opportunity to memorize and recite Ariadne’s lament, 64.132-201 (hexameters), a passage never surpassed in Latin and superbly fit for performance. Weak students will never learn more than a few lines of this masterpiece; those who succeed in this undertaking rarely need the extra credit, and they usually become Latin majors thereafter. This is further proof, if proof were needed, that it is hard work that produces classics majors, not easy grades.
World History
