Yates 1966

Metrodorus of Scepsis: 39ff.; played political and cultural role at court of Mithrodates; hist works on rhetoric are lose; linked places to zodiac signs; see Yates 40-2

Ad Herennium, 86-2BC

• compiles in Rome around 86-82BC
• goes thru five parts of rhetoric (INVENTIO, DISPOSITIO, ELOCUTIO, MEMORIA, PRONUNTIO)
  • MEMORIA: 2 kinds; natural, "that which is engrafted in our minds, "born simultaneously with thought"; and artificial, which is the art of memory that Yates is concered with (Yates 5)
• artificial memory:
  • "established from places and images (Constat igitur artificiosa memoria ex locis et imaginibus)" (Yates 6)
  • LOCUS: place easily grasped by the memory, such as a house"
  • IMAGES: "forms, marks, or simulacra" (Yates 6
  • quoted on Yates 6: "For the places are very much like wax tablets or papyrus, the images like the letters, the arrangement and disposition of the images like the script, and the delivery is like the reading."

Cicero's distinction between "words" and "things": "'things are thus the subejct omatter of the speech; 'words' are the language in which that subject matter is clother" (Yates 9)

• MEMORIA RERUM; memorizing the order of notions;
• MEMORIA VERBORUM; memorizing word-for-word in correct order

Ad Herennium author encourages students to rouse their memory by imagining very sharp, emotional images -- disturbing, violent (Yates 9-11)

De oratore, Cicero, 1C BC

"Beginning with the statement, introduced by the Simonides story that the art consist in places and images and is like an inner writing on wax, he goes on to discuss natural and artifical memory, with the usual conclusion that nature can be improved by art. Then follow rules for places and rules for images; then the discussion of memroy for things and memory or words. Though he agrees that memory for things is alone essential for the orator he has evidently put himself through a memory for words drill in which images for words move (?), change their cases (?), draw a whole sentence into one word image, in some extraordinary manner which he visualises within, as though it were the art of some consummate painter." (Yates 19)

Simonides, origins of ars mem.: at a party/banquet, roof caves in, everyone dies; Simonides is able to remember based on where everyone sat (Yates 1-3); story related in Cicero's De oratore