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It is 516 B.C., Mnemosyne is the Greek goddess of memory. Simonides is inventing the art of memory. He is teaching that painting, poetry and memory are intense visualization. In order to demonstrate this, spaces are designed with visual details that elicit lines of poetry to the initiated. Carefully placed windows and small openings direct light onto these details. The topic of the day is "Education and Memory Theater." Could it be that the mind has an eye? -Time of the Teacher, Ben Davis |
The history of the art of memory begins with the Greek orator Simonides of Ceos, (556-468 B.C.). Simonides was characterised on ancient tablets as being the inventor of the system of memory-aids described as Visual Imagery Mnemonics. Many scholars view Simonides as a turning point in the history of the art of memory due to this shift that occurred within the emergence of a more highly organised society that could implement a new system beyond oral tradition .
Cicero & Mnemonics (104-63 B.C.)
The period of history that followed Simonides mnemonics teachings produced astonishment by citizens who witnessed the powerful orators who had adapted these techniques. The orator and Roman Statesmen Cicero utilised mnemonics by placing objects within an imagined visual space, or inner mansion, as a means to remember his speeches. His powerful oratories made him the most important figure in the transfer of Greek rhetoric to the Latin world.
Augustine On Memory (354-430 A.D.)
The well known philosopher Augustine is one of the few thinkers to have deeply reflected on the problems of memory. At the tender age of 19, Augustine was exposed to Cicero's work Hortensius, that led him to fascination with philosophical questions. His infamous work Confessions, speaks of the images from sense impressions, which are stored away in the vast court of memory in its large and boundless chamber:
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"I come to the fields and spacious places of memory, where are the treasures of innumerable images, brought into it from things of all sorts perceived by the senses. This is stored up, whatever besides we think, either by enlarging or diminishing, or any other way varying those things which the sense hath come to; and whatever else hath been committed and laid-up, which forgetfulness hath not yet swallowed up and buried." |
