Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.

It will be best to give his words verbatim: [*](De Or. II. lxxxvii. 358. )

We must for this purpose employ a number of remarkable places, clearly envisaged and separated by short intervals: the
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images which we use must be active, sharply-cut and distinctive, such as may occur to the mind and strike it with rapidity.

This makes me wonder all the more, how Metrodorus [*]( Of Scepsis, the favourite of Mithradates Eupator. See de Or. II. lxxxviii. 360. He used the signs of the Zodiac as aids to the memory, subdividing each into thirty compartments. Quintilian wonders on what principle he can have made such a division, necessarily purely artificial in nature. ) should have found three hundred and sixty different localities in the twelve signs of the Zodiac through which the sun passes. It was doubtless due to the vanity and boastfulness of a man who was inclined to vaunt his memory as being the result of art rather than of natural gifts.

I am far from denying that those devices may be useful for certain purposes, as, for example, if we have to reproduce a number of names in the order in which we heard them. For those who use such aids place the things which have to be remembered in localities which they have previously fixed in the memory; they put a table, for instance, in the forecourt, a platform in the hall and so on with the rest, and then, when they retrace their steps, they find the objects where they had placed them.

Such a practice may perhaps have been of use to those who, after an auction, have succeeded in stating what object they had sold to each buyer, their statements being checked by the books of the money takers; a feat which it is alleged was performed by Hortensius. It will, however, be of less service in learning the various parts of a set speech. For thoughts do not call up the same images as material things, and a symbol requires to be specially invented for them, although even here a particular place may serve to remind us, as, for example, of some conversation that may have been held there. But how can such a method grasp a whole series of connected words?

I pass by the fact that there are certain things which it is impossible to represent by

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symbols, as, for example, conjunctions. We may, it is true, like shorthand writers, have definite symbols for everything, and may select an infinite number of places to recall all the words contained in the five books of the second pleading against Verres, and we may even remember them all as if they were deposits placed in safe-keeping. But will not the flow of our speech inevitably be impeded by the double task imposed upon our memory?

For how can our words be expected to flow in connected speech, if we have to look back at separate symbols for each individual word? Therefore the experts mentioned by Cicero [*](de Or. II. lxxxvii. 360. Charmadas or Charmides, an elder contemporary of Cicero. ) as having trained their memory by methods of this kind, namely Charmadas, and Metrodorus of Scepsis, to whom I have just referred, may keep their systems for their own use. My precepts on the subject shall be of a simpler kind.

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. But the sections into which we divide it for this purpose should not be very short: otherwise they will be too many in number, and will break up and distract the memory. I am not, however, prepared to recommend any definite length; it will depend on the natural limits of the passage concerned, unless, indeed, it be so long as itself to require subdivision.

But some limits must be fixed to enable us, by dint of frequent and continuous practice, to connect the words in their proper order, which is a task of no small difficulty, and subsequently to unite the various sections into a whole when we go over them in order. If certain portions prove especially difficult to

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remember, it will be found advantageous to indicate them by certain marks, the remembrance of which will refresh and stimulate the memory.