Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE CRITICAL TEXTS OF ANTIQUITY
- Introduction
- 1 Plato
- 2 Aristotle
- 3 Cicero
- 4 Pliny and Roman naturalists on memory; Borges's Funes the Memorious
- 5 Plotinus and the early neo-Platonists on memory and mind
- 6 Augustine: the early works
- 7 Augustine's De Trinitate; on memory, time and the presentness of the past
- PART II THE PRACTICE OF MEMORY DURING THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION FROM CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY TO THE CHRISTIAN MONASTIC CENTURIES
- Introduction
- PART III THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SCHOLASTIC UNDERSTANDING OF MEMORY
- Introduction
- PART IV ARISTOTLE NEO-PLATONISED: THE REVIVAL OF ARISTOTLE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOLASTIC THEORIES OF MEMORY
- Introduction
- PART V LATER MEDIEVAL THEORIES OF MEMORY: THE VIA ANTIQUA AND THE VIA MODERNA.
- Introduction
- Conclusion: an all too brief account of modern theories of mind and remembering
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Pliny and Roman naturalists on memory; Borges's Funes the Memorious
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE CRITICAL TEXTS OF ANTIQUITY
- Introduction
- 1 Plato
- 2 Aristotle
- 3 Cicero
- 4 Pliny and Roman naturalists on memory; Borges's Funes the Memorious
- 5 Plotinus and the early neo-Platonists on memory and mind
- 6 Augustine: the early works
- 7 Augustine's De Trinitate; on memory, time and the presentness of the past
- PART II THE PRACTICE OF MEMORY DURING THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION FROM CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY TO THE CHRISTIAN MONASTIC CENTURIES
- Introduction
- PART III THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SCHOLASTIC UNDERSTANDING OF MEMORY
- Introduction
- PART IV ARISTOTLE NEO-PLATONISED: THE REVIVAL OF ARISTOTLE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOLASTIC THEORIES OF MEMORY
- Introduction
- PART V LATER MEDIEVAL THEORIES OF MEMORY: THE VIA ANTIQUA AND THE VIA MODERNA.
- Introduction
- Conclusion: an all too brief account of modern theories of mind and remembering
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The problem of the memory and how it operated remained one of amazement for Romans of the first centuries after Christ. That extraordinary encyclopedia of exceptional events, Pliny's Historia Naturalis, which has much in common with a Guinness Book of Records, or even more so with a Ripley's Believe It or Not, devotes Book VII to exceptional endurances, exceptional transmissions of sound, exceptional sight and strength evidenced throughout the history of mankind. Chapter 24 speaks of memory, another exceptional faculty brought to its height by certain exceptional men of the past:
As to memory, the boon most necessary for life, it is not easy to say who most excelled in it, so many men have gained renown for it. King Cyrus could give their names to all the soldiers in his army. Lucius Scipio knew the names of the whole Roman people, King Pyrrhus's envoy Cineas knew those of the Senate and knighthood at Rome the day after his arrival [280 bc]. Mithridates who as king of twenty-two races gave judgements in as many languages, in an assembly addressing each race in turn without an interpreter. A person in Greece named Charmadas recited the contents of any volumes in libraries that anyone asked him to quote, just as if he were reading them. Finally, a memoria technica was constructed, which was invented by the lyric poet Simonides and perfected by Metrodorus of Scepsis, enabling anything heard to be repeated in the identical words. […]
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- Information
- Ancient and Medieval MemoriesStudies in the Reconstruction of the Past, pp. 60 - 62Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992