The variety of techniques and the number of practical suggestions given by Quintilian demonstrate that training the memory in classical antiquity was a many-faceted process. What you needed to memorize would determine which method you would employ. Quintilian (Inst. 11.2.26-49) did not himself use the system of loci and mental imagery, and offers instead what he regards as simpler precepts (nos simpli-ciora tradamas, 11.2.26). Much of what he recommends is practical. Foremost are regular practice, a daily regimen, graduated exercises, and the divide-and-conquer approach:
Quaecunque aetas operam iuvandae studio memoriae dabit devoret initio taedium illud et scripta et lecta saepius revoluendi et quasi eundem cibum remandendi. quod ipsum hoc fieri potest levius si pauca primum et quae odium non adferant coeperimus ediscere... poetica prius, tum oratorum, novissime etiam solutiora numeris et magis ab usu dicendi remota, qualia sunt iuris consultorum. (Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 11.2.41; tr. H. Butler 1920) all who, whatever their age, desire to cultivate the power of memory, should endeavor to swallow the initial tedium of reading and re-reading what they have written or read, a process which we may compare to chewing the cud. This task will be rendered less tiresome if we begin by confining ourselves to learning only a little at a time, in amounts not sufficient to create disgust.... We should begin with poetry and then go on to oratory, while finally we may attempt passages still freer in rhythm and less akin to ordinary speech, such, for example, as passages from legal writers.
Again, notice the interplay between memory and writing. Quintilian believes that si longior complectenda memoria fuerit oratio, proderit per partes ediscere; laborat enim maxime onere (‘‘if a speech of some length has to be committed to memory, it will be well to learn it piecemeal, since there is nothing so bad for the memory as being overburdened,’’ 11.2.27; tr. H. Butler 1920). Not only should you practice, but you should also test yourself to make sure you have got it right (11.2.34-5). Part of the reason for so much practice is that etiam illa praevelox fere cito effluit, et, velut praesenti officio functa nihil in posterum debeat, tamquam dimissa discedit (‘‘the abnormally rapid memory fails as a rule to last and takes its leave as though, its immediate task accomplished, it had no further duties to perform,’’ 11.2.44; tr. H. Butler 1920), as every student who has ever crammed for a test knows.
Next after practice comes ‘‘the most powerful aid of all’’: the ‘‘division and artistic structure’’ of whatever you are trying to memorize (potentissima... divisio et compo-sitio, 11.2.36). The necessity for organization or arrangement (taxis in Greek, dis-positio in Latin) was apparent from the time when the principles of rhetoric were first formulated. The idea of order in a speech is related to the idea of order for the topoi and loci. Both depend on a particular sequence and both can hold different kinds of information. Aristotle (Mem. 452a 3, Rh. 2.26.5) uses the same word, taxis, for both. Not only should your speech be well organized with clearly marked divisions, but also the subject of your speech should have its own internal logic. Quintilian advises that point should follow point in a natural development of the argument so that nam qui recte diviserit, nunquam poterit in rerum ordine errare (‘‘the connection will be so perfect that nothing can be omitted or inserted without the fact of the omission or insertion being obvious,’’ Inst. 11.2.36; tr. H. Butler 1920). In other words, your organization constrains what you will say next, in much the same way as meter and rhyme guide what the oral composer says (Rubin 1995). One of the major benefits from such a tight organization goes unmentioned by Quintilian: your listeners and readers will also more easily understand and remember what you have said or written.
Quintilian has other suggestions that may seem curious today. For example: illud ediscendo scribendoque commune est, utrique plurimum conferre bonam valetudinem, digestum cibum, animum cogitationibus aliis liberum (‘‘both learning by heart and writing have this feature in common: namely, that good health, sound digestion, and freedom from other preoccupations of mind contribute largely to the success of both,’’ 11.2.35; tr. H. Butler 1920). While we would agree that concentration on the matter at hand is more productive than letting the mind wander, good health and sound digestion are appreciated in their own right and in sports, but not always as an integral part of the literate life, as the lives of many scholars demonstrate. Quintilian (11.2.33) also believes that you should not memorize silently, but murmur the text out loud. He is right that engaging more than one ofyour senses in learning increases the likelihood of remembering (Small 1997: 72-8).
Next Quintilian (11.2.34), as a fully literate person, prefers to memorize from a written text rather than orally, in part because recall works best if you recreate the context in which you first experienced and, in this case, memorized something. Hence you are more likely to remember the ‘‘page’’ of your text - the passage was on the left side with a typo halfway down - if you recall its original (11.2.32). Furthermore, he recommends marking up your text to make it easier to recall (11.2.28-9). Because the use of scriptio continua forced the reader to ‘‘punctuate’’ the text, it may not only have aided the reader in memorizing, in making the text truly his own, but also it may have helped scriptio continua to survive for so long. If someone else ‘‘punctuates’’ the text, in effect doing all the work for you, you will not be able to remember that text as easily. Yet Quintilian does not recommend total memorization in all cases. For example:
Plerumque autem multa agentibus accidit, ut maxime necessaria et utique initia scribant cetera quae domo adferunt cogitatione complectantur, subitus ex tempore occurrant; quod fecisse M. Tullium commentariis ipsius apparet. (Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 10.7.30; tr. H. Butler 1920)
It is, however, a common practice with those who have many cases to plead to write out the most necessary portions, more especially the beginnings of their speeches, to cover the remainder of that which they are able to prepare by careful premeditation and to trust to improvisation in emergency, a practice regularly adopted by Cicero, as is clear from his notebooks.
Quintilian (11.2.43) also recommends a night’s rest after memorizing, which psychological experiments have found to work. Finally, the only ancient method that Quintilian and the others who wrote about mnemotechnics did not directly describe is the use of jingles and songs to learn things like the alphabet and arithmetic (Cic. Leg. 2.23.59; August. Conf. 1.13). They probably did not mention them because they did not consider them artificial devices for memorizing, as we do today. We rely less on memory than in antiquity and more on external, written aids, like shopping lists and the refrigerator as bulletin board (Norman 1992: 48-58). Nonetheless, the mnemonic most commonly used today was never used in antiquity: the acronym or reduction coding mnemonics, as it is more formally called (Baddeley 1990: 190-3). For instance, if you want to remember the Great Lakes, you need memorize only one word, HOMES. Each letter stands for a lake: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior.
World History
