Are you studying, fishing, hunting, or everything at once? All of this can happen at the same time on the shores of Como. For, the lake has fish, the forests around the lake have beasts, and your most isolated retreat supplies constant opportunities for study. But whether you are doing it all at once or just one thing, I cannot say that “I hate you for it”, but I am still anguished that I can’t join in when I long for them the way a sick man desires wine, baths, and springs.
Ah! how shall I ever drop these tightest of bonds if there is no way to untie them? Never, I suspect. For new business grows on top of the old before what was there is handled. As many links as already exist are added anew each day as my chain extends ever on.
Goodbye.
Plinius Caninio Suo S.
1Studes an piscaris an venaris an simul omnia? Possunt enim omnia simul fieri ad Larium nostrum. Nam lacus piscem, feras silvae quibus lacus cingitur, studia altissimus iste secessus adfatim suggerunt. 2Sed sive omnia simul sive aliquid facis, non possum dicere “invideo”; angor tamen non et mihi licere, qui sic concupisco ut aegri vinum balinea fontes. Numquamne hos artissimos laqueos, si solvere negatur, abrumpam? Numquam, puto. Nam veteribus negotiis nova accrescunt, nec tamen priora peraguntur: tot nexibus, tot quasi catenis maius in dies occupationum agmen extenditur. Vale.
Ancient memory techniques go back to oratorical training in theory, but in practice probably much further back in human history. PPhilostratus records the reputation of Dionysius of Miletus and his “memory-men”. But one of the most easily abused and likely misunderstood method from the ancient world is the “memory palace” (or “method of loci“), made famous by Cicero, but credited to the lyric poet Simonides.
Cicero De Oratore 2.352–355
“But, so I may return to the matter”, he said, “I am not as smart as Themistocles was as to prefer the art of forgetting to the art of memory. And So I am thankful to that Simonides of Ceos who, as they say, first produced an art of memory. For they say that when Simonides was dining at the home of a wealthy aristocrat named Scopas in Thessaly and had performed that song which he wrote in his honor—in which there were many segments composed for Castor and Pollux elaborated in the way of poets. Then Scopas told him cruelly that he would pay him half as much as he had promised he would give for the song; if it seemed right to him, he could ask Tyndareus’ sons for the other half since he had praised them equally.
A little while later, as they tell the tale, it was announced that Simonides should go outside—there were two young men at the door who had been calling him insistently. He rose, exited, and so no one. Meanwhile, in the same space of time, the ceiling under which Scopas was having his feast collapsed: the man was crushed by the ruins a d died with his relatives. When people wanted to bury them they could not recognize who was where because they were crushed. Simonides is said to have shown the place in which each man died from his memory for their individual burials.
From this experience, Simonides is said to have learned that it is order most of all that brings light to memory. And thus those who wish to practice this aspect of the skill must select specific places and shape in their mind the matters they wish to hold in their memory and locate these facts in those places. It will so turn out that the order of the places will safeguard the order of the matters, the reflections of the facts will remind of the facts themselves, and we may use the places like wax and the ideas like letters written upon it.”
Sed, ut ad rem redeam, non sum tanto ego, inquit, ingenio quanto Themistocles fuit, ut oblivionis artem quam memoriae malim; gratiamque habeo Simonidi illi Cio quem primum ferunt artem memoriae protulisse. Dicunt enim cum cenaret Crannone in Thessalia Simonides apud Scopam fortunatum hominem et nobilem cecinissetque id carmen quod in eum scripsisset, in quo multa ornandi causa poetarum more in Castorem scripta et Pollucem fuissent, nimis illum sordide Simonidi dixisse se dimidium eius ei quod pactus esset pro illo carmine daturum: reliquum a suis Tyndaridis quos aeque laudasset peteret si ei videretur. Paulo post esse ferunt nuntiatum Simonidi ut prodiret: iuvenes stare ad ianuam duos quosdam qui eum magnopere evocarent; surrexisse illum, prodisse, vidisse neminem; hoc interim spatio conclave illud ubi epularetur Scopas concidisse; ea ruina ipsum cum cognatis oppressum suis interiisse; quos cum humare vellent sui neque possent obtritos internoscere ullo modo, Simonides dicitur ex eo quod meminisset quo eorum loco quisque cubuisset demonstrator uniuscuiusque sepeliendi fuisse; hac tum re admonitus invenisse fertur ordinem esse maxime qui memoriae lumen afferret. Itaque eis qui hanc partem ingeni exercerent locos esse capiendos et ea quae memoria tenere vellent effingenda animo atque in eis locis collocanda: sic fore ut ordinem rerum locorum ordo conservaret, res autem ipsas rerum effigies notaret, atque ut locis pro cera, simulacris pro litteris uteremur.
thanks to S. Raudnitz for reminding me of this passage too!
Soc. “For the sake of argument, imagine that there is a single chunk of wax in our minds, for some it is bigger, for some smaller, and for one the wax is clearer, while for another it is more contaminated and rather inflexible; for others, in turn, the wax more pliable and even.”
Th. Ok….
Soc. Let us say that this is the gift of the Muses’ mother, Mnemosunê, and when we wish to recall something we have seen or heard or thought ourselves, we show this wax to our perceptions or thoughts and find the imprint, just as we find meaning in seal rings. Whatever is printed can be remembered and understood as long as its image persists. Whenever it is softened or cannot be recorded is forgotten and not understood.”
And Quintilian trying to turn our ability to fantasize into something more ‘productive’:
Quintilian’s Inst. Orat. 6.2
“The fictions I have been talking about pursue us when our minds are at rest as empty hopes or certain daydreams so that we imagine we are on a journey, sailing, fighting, talking to new people, or distributing wealth we do not have—and we seem not to be considering but to be doing these things. Couldn’t we transfer this vice of the mind to something useful?”
quod quidem nobis volentibus facile continget; nisi vero inter otia animorum et spes inanes et velut somnia quaedam vigilantium ita nos hae de quibus loquor imagines prosecuntur ut peregrinari navigare proeliari, populos adloqui, divitiarum quas non habemus usum videamur disponere, nec cogitare sed facere, hoc animi vitium ad utilitatem non transferemus [ad hominem]
And Plutarch on the importance of memory for education
Plutarch, The Education of Children (Moralia 9)
It is especially important to train and practice children’s memory: for memory is the warehouse of learning. This is why we used to mythologize Memory as the mother of the Muses, making it clear through allegory that nothing creates and nourishes the way memory does. This should be trained in both cases, whether children have a good memory from the beginning or are naturally forgetful. For we may strengthen the inborn ability and supplement the deficiency. The first group will be better than others; but the second will be better than themselves. This is why the Hesiodic line rings true: “If you add a little by little, and you keep doing it, soon you can have something great.”
Parents should also not forget that a skill of memory contributes its great worth not only to education but to life’s actions in general. For the memory of past events becomes an example of good planning for future actions.”
Rudolf Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship 1300-1850 (Chp. IX):
“Born in 1540 in the south of France, he [Joseph Justus Scaliger] went to school at Bordeaux, but only for a very short time; in practice his father Julius Caesar, the author of Poetices libri septem, was his principal teacher. He was made to write eighty to a hundred or even two hundred lines of Latin verse every day at his father’s dictation and to deliver daily declamation in Latin prose; this practice in speaking and writing gave him a firm grounding in the principles of versification and in the free use of the Latin language. But from his early youth he also had a feeling for the observation of nature, for natural sciences, mathematics, and astronomy, showing himself a true and worthy contemporary of Galileo, Kepler, Tycho de Brahe, and Bacon. His father, while making him a perfect Latin scholar, kept him strictly away from Greek language and literature; and it was only at the age of nineteen, after his father’s death, that he had the opportunity of going to Paris to learn Greek. At the Collège de France he attended the lectures of Turnebus; but for the most part he remained his own teacher in Greek, reading Homer in three months, all the other Greek poets in the next four months, and in two years the whole of the Greek literature accessible to him. At the same time, in order to practise the knowledge thus acquired, he translated difficult texts like Lycophron and the Orphic Hymns (1561) into Latin, making use for this purpose of his astonishing knowledge of early Latin vocabulary.”
Rudolf Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship 1300-1850 (Chp. IX):
“When Robert Étienne died in 1559 in Geneva, the press passed to the eldest of his children, Henri (who was born probably in Paris in 1531). Latin was, we may say, his mother tongue; he learnt Greek as a child and at the age of eleven attended the lectures of the great classical scholars at the Collège Royal. The forties of the sixteenth century were just the age of that passionate Grecism in France which we have tried to describe; Henri Étienne was imbued with the deepest love of the Greek language and became incredibly familiar with its idiom. He really thought in Greek and could speak it; to him it was simply not a foreign language at all. In this respect he was, as far as I can see, unique. He was indeed not an ordinary academic grammarian or critic, but a great adventurer in the field of Greek scholarship.”
[…]
For Henri Étienne was neither truly critical nor careful, and had neither the sense of poetry nor literary taste. That is the flaw in the work of this passionate genius. His prefaces are full of personal remarks and would provide ample material for an extensive authoritative biography.”
Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, de Liberorum Educatione:
“Boys should also read the historians such as Livy and Sallust, though they may need to be further advanced in order to understand them. Justin and Quintus Curtius and Arrian, whom Petrus Paulus translated are true, and not fantastic stories. They ought to run through the deeds of Alexander. Valerius, the historian and philosopher, is not unworthy to be joined with these. But Suetonius ought not to be entrusted to boys. History may also be received with no small profit from the books of Kings, Maccabees, Judith, Esdra, Esther, the evangelists, and the Acts of the Apostles. ‘For history’, as Cicero says, ‘is a witness to the times, the light of the truth, the instructor of life, the messenger of antiquity.’ It is most useful, therefore, to have read as many histories as possible and to exercise oneself in them, so that you might know from the example of others how to pursue what is useful and avoid what is harmful. I would not, however, have you occupied with excessive labor, but it is enough to have learned the histories related by famous authors.On no account, if it were up to me, would I let the histories of the Bohemians or the Hungarians be given to a boy. For they are written by the uneducated, they contain a number of imbecilities, many lies, no notable thoughts, and no ornamentation. For, as Pliny says, ‘no book is so bad that some good may not be taken from it’, and on that account appears willing to grant anything written a reading over, the thought really ought to apply to those who are already learned, and not to children. For, unless children are steeped from the beginning in the best examples, they will never be able to attain good sense.”
“I now turn to Tyrannio. Do you really do this? Was this true? There without me? And this when I so many times did not go without you even though I had the ability. How will you make this up to me? There is one way, clearly, if you send me the book which I ask again that you should send to me. Even if the book itself will not delight me any more than your admiration of it.
I adore the man who loves every kind of learning and I am truly happy that you cherish so refined a course of study. But this is completely you. For you are passionate to learn, the only thing which feeds the mind. But, I must ask, what impact does this ‘grave’ and ‘acute’ stuff have on the pursuit of the highest good?”
Venio ad Tyrannionem. ain tu? verum hoc fuit? sine me? at ego quotiens, cum essem otiosus, sine te tamen nolui! quo modo ergo hoc lues? uno scilicet, si mihi librum miseris; quod ut facias etiam atque etiam rogo. etsi me non magis ipse liber delectabit quam tua admiratio delectavit. amo enim πάντα φιλειδήμονα teque istam tam tenuem ϑεωρíαν tam valde admiratum esse gaudeo. etsi tua quidem sunt eius modi omnia. scire enim vis; quo uno animus alitur. sed, quaeso, quid ex ista acuta et gravi refertur ad τέλος?
Cicero seems to have his finger on a Senecan pulse here:
Seneca, De Brevitate Vitae 13
“This sickness used to just afflict the Greeks, to discover the number of oars Odysseus possessed, whether the Iliad was written before the Odyssey, whether the poems belong to the same author, and other matters like this which, if you keep them to yourself, cannot please your private mind; but if you publish them, you seem less learned than annoying.”
Graecorum iste morbus fuit quaerere, quem numerum Ulixes remigum habuisset, prior scripta esset Ilias an Odyssia, praeterea an eiusdem essent auctoris, alia deinceps huius notae, quae sive contineas, nihil tacitam conscientiam iuvant sive proferas, non doctior videaris sed molestior.
Seneca, Moral Epistle 108
“But some error comes thanks to our teachers who instruct us how to argue but not how to live; some error too comes from students, who bring themselves to teachers not for the nourishing of the soul, but the cultivation of our wit. Thus what was philosophy has been turned into philology.”
Sed aliquid praecipientium vitio peccatur, qui nos docent disputare, non vivere, aliquid discentium, qui propositum adferunt ad praeceptores suos non animum excolendi, sed ingenium. Itaque quae philosophia fuit, facta philologia est.
Rudolf Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship 1300-1850 (Chp. II):
“Poggio never strove after a Ciceronian style or even a grammatically correct Latin; he treated Latin as if it were a living language, and because of that we see him in the last years of his life at feud with the leading spirit of the next generation, Lorenzo Valla.
One day in 1451 Poggio found in a copy of the collection of his letters to Niccoli, of which he was very proud, some critical and ironical comments upon his Latinity, scrawled in the margin by a pupil of Valla’s; he got so angry with Valla, whom he suspected of being the author, that he tried to have him murdered, a dramatic refutation, had he succeeded, of Schopenhauer’s saying that ‘the history of . . . learning and art’ (in contrast to the universal history of the world) ‘is always going on . . . guiltless and without bloodshed.’ But Poggio finally confined himself to a form of retaliation more appropriate in a scholar, a literary invective. Valla, no less pugnacious, replied, and a war of pamphlets, five from each side, ensued, the arguments of which were of a general importance far beyond the trivial cause.”
“I would not want to press the point too much, yet I would yield some of my right since I am writing to a lady. I confess, then: just as the people are divided into nobility and plebeians, so among poets there are certain grades of dignity. If, therefore, something is published by a comic poet and not glossed over with a sufficiently decent argument, or if a satirist rails on a little too openly about vice, a lady should not read or even look at their books! They are, as it were, the rabble of the poets. But, if she doesn’t read those aristocrats of literature – I mean Vergil, and Seneca, and Statius, and the rest of that sort – she should know that she is missing the greatest ornament of literary study. Nor can she hope to attain the best if she is lacking it.
On the whole, that superlative excellence about which I write does not come to anyone except through a knowledge of many different things. Therefore, one should have seen and read many subjects, and applied considerable labor to the study of philosophers, poets, orators, historians, and all other writers.”
Sed ne pertinax ipse sim, placet aliquid de iure meo remittere, praesertim cum ad mulierem scribam. Fateor ergo: ut populus in nobilitatem plebemque dividitur, ita inter poetas gradus quosdam dignitatis. Si quid igitur vel a comico non satis pudico argumento protexitur aut a satyro vitium aliquod apertius exprobatur, ne legat haec mulier neve inspiciat! Sunt enim veluti vulgus poetarum. At enim proceres illos, Vergilium dico et Senecam et Statium ceterosque eiusmodi, nisi legerit, maximum sibi ornamentum sciat deesse litterarum; nec summum speret, cui haec pars desit.
Omnino enim praestantia illa, de qua loquor, non nisi ex multarum variarumque rerum fit cognitione. Itaque multa vidisse legisseque oportet et philosophis et poetis et oratoribus et historicis et aliis omnibus scriptoribus operam impertisse.
“A fear overcame the senators that if the army were dismissed, then secret assemblies and conspiracies would arise. And thus, even though the draft was made by a dictator—because they had sworn a consular oath they were still believed to beheld by this sacrament—they ordered the legions to depart the city on the grounds that the war had been renewed by the Aequi. This deed accelerated the rebellion.
At first, there was some interest in the murder of the consuls (to absolve them of their obligation); but when they then learned that no crime would release them from their oath, they seceded on to the Sacred Mount across the Anio river, which is three miles from the city, on the advice of a man named Sicinus. This story is more common than the one which Piso offers—that the secession was made upon the Aventine hill.
There, the camp was fortified without any leader with a trench and wall quietly, as they took nothing unless it was necessary for their food for several days and neither offended anyone nor took offense. But there was a major panic in the city and because of mutual fear all activities were suspended. Those left behind feared violence from the senators because they were abandoned by their own class; and the senators were fearing the plebians who remained in the city because they were uncertain whether they stayed there or preferred to leave. How long could a mass of people who had seceded remain peaceful? What would happen after this if there were an external threat first? There was certainly no home left unless they could bring the people into harmony; and it was decided they must reconcile the state by just means or unjust.”
timor inde patres incessit ne, si dimissus exercitus foret, rursus coetus occulti coniurationesque fierent. itaque quamquam per dictatorem dilectus habitus esset, tamen quoniam in consulum uerba iurassent sacramento teneri militem rati, per causam renouati ab Aequis belli educi ex urbe legiones iussere. [2] quo facto maturata est seditio. et primo agitatum dicitur de consulum caede, ut soluerentur sacramento; doctos deinde nullam scelere religionem exsolui, Sicinio quodam auctore iniussu consulum in Sacrum montem secessisse. trans Anienem amnem est, tria ab urbe milia passuum. [3] ea frequentior fama est quam cuius Piso auctor est, in Auentinum secessionem factam esse. [4] ibi sine ullo duce uallo fossaque communitis castris quieti, rem nullam nisi necessariam ad uictum sumendo, per aliquot dies neque lacessiti neque lacessentes sese tenuere. [5] pauor ingens in urbe, metuque mutuo suspensa erant omnia. timere relicta ab suis plebis uiolentiam patrum; timere patres residem in urbe plebem, incerti manere eam an abire mallent: [6] quamdiu autem tranquillam quae secesserit multitudinem fore? quid futurum deinde si quod externum interim bellum exsistat? [7] nullam profecto nisi in concordia ciuium spem reliquam ducere; eam per aequa, per iniqua reconciliandam ciuitati esse.
The secessio plebis was repeated at key times in Roman history and became a fundamental instrument to force the ruling (and moneyed/landed) class to make political compromises with the larger number of citizen soldiers upon whom the city (and the Republic) depended for its safety (and, really, existence). Modern labor strikes are not directly related to this Roman action–they developed with the rise of the Industrial state. In a short analogy, labor is to capital as the army was to the Roman state.
Labor unions are, in my ever so humble opinion, probably the last possible bulwark against not just the corporatization of higher education but also against the completion of our anglo-american metamorphoses in to technology-driven plutocracies. (And it may be too late.) But I take the limited coverage in our presses as a sign that such subjects are threatening to the very media corporations that deny collective bargaining to their ‘workers’ in the gig economy.
Caesar, Civil War 1.7.5-7
“Whenever in the past the senate has made a decree asking officers to make sure that the republic meet no harm—and in this wording the senatus consultum is also a call to arms for the Roman people—it has been made under the condition of evil laws, a violent tribune, or during a secession of the plebs when they had occupied the temples and mounts. [Caesar] explained that these examples from an earlier age were paid for with the fates of Saturninus and the Gracchi. (At that time none of these things were done or even considered. No law was suggested; no assembly was called; no secession was made.)
quotienscumque sit decretum darent operam magistratus ne quid res publica detrimenti caperet, qua voce et quo senatus consulto populus Romanus ad arma sit vocatus, factum in perniciosis legibus, in vi tribunicia, in secessione populi, templis locisque editioribus occupatis. 6Atque haec superioris aetatis exempla expiata Saturnini atque Gracchorum casibus docet. (Quarum rerum illo tempore nihil factum, ne cogitatum quidem. Nulla lex promulgata, non cum populo agi coeptum, nulla secessio facta.)
Cicero, Republic II.58
“For that very principle which I introduced at the beginning is this: unless there is equal access in a state to laws, offices, and duties so that the magistrates have sufficient power, the plans of the highest citizens have enough authority, and the people have enough freedom, the state cannot be guarded against revolution. For when our state was troubled by debt, the plebeians first occupied the Sacred Mount and then the Aventine.”
Id enim tenetote, quod initio dixi, nisi aequabilis haec in civitate conpensatio sit et iuris et officii et muneris, ut et potestatis satis in magistratibus et auctoritatis in principum consilio et libertatis in populo sit, non posse hunc incommutabilem rei publicae conservari statum. nam cum esset ex aere alieno commota civitas, plebs montem sacrum prius, deinde Aventinum occupavit.
Cicero, Republic II.63
“Therefore, because of the injustice of these men [the decemviri], there was the largest rebellion and the whole state was transformed. For those rulers had created two tables of laws which included most inhumanely, a law against plebeians wedding patricians, even though marriage between different nationalities is permitted! This law was later voided by the plebeian Canuleian Decree. The [decemviri also pursued their own pleasure harshly and greedily in every exercise of power over the people.”
ergo horum ex iniustitia subito exorta est maxima perturbatio et totius commutatio rei publicae; qui duabus tabulis iniquarum legum additis, quibus, etiam quae diiunctis populis tribui solent conubia, haec illi ut ne plebei cum patribus1 essent, inhumanissima lege sanxerunt, quae postea plebei scito Canuleio abrogata est, libidinoseque omni imperio et acerbe et avare populo praefuerunt.
Here is the opening summary from Brill’s New Pauly on the secessio plebis (2006: von Ungern-Sternberg, Jürgen)
“Roman tradition terms as secessio (from Latin secedere, ‘to go away, to withdraw’) the remonstrative exodus of the Roman plebeians from the urban area delimited by the pomerium on to a neighbouring hill. This action was on a number of occasions the culmination of confrontation between the patricians ( patricii ) and the plebs . The first secessio in particular may have been instrumental in the formation of a self-conscious plebeian community under the leadership of at first two, later apparently five people’s tribunes ( tribunus plebis ), to whose protection all plebeians committed themselves by a lex sacrata (‘law subject to the sanction of execration’)”
“Let us come then to the Greeks so that we can see what they think about God. For the Greeks, saying that they were wise, became stupid – worse even than the Chaldeans – introducing the notion that there were many gods, some of them men and others women. They claimed that they were the authors of all vices and all iniquities so that, employing the gods as the defenders of their own villainy, they could commit adultery, rape, kill, and perform every piece of wickedness under the sun. Saturn was brought out at the head of their pantheon, and they sacrifice his sons to him; he fathered many children with Rhea, and in his insanity, he ate his sons. They say that Jupiter cut off his penis and threw it into the sea, from which Venus was said to have been miraculously born. Jupiter then bound his father up and hurled him into Tartarus. Jupiter was then installed, and they say that he was the king of all the gods, and that he was transformed into animals so that he could commit adultery with mortal women. They represent him as transformed into a bull for Europa, into gold for Diana, into a swan for Leda, into a satyr for Emptione, and into lightning for Semele, and he produced from these unions many children, such as Dionysus, Zethus and Amphion, Hercules, and Apollo, and Artemis, and Perseus, and Castor and Pollux and Helen, and Juno*, and Radamanthus and Sarpedon, and the nine daughters whom they called the Muses.”
*Probably Minos is meant here.
Veniamus itaque ad Graecos ut videamus quid forte de Deo sentiant. Graeci namque dicentes se esse sapientes stulti facti sunt, deterius Chaldaeis, introducentes plurimos deos factos esse, alios quidem masculos, alios vero feminas; omnium vitiorum cunctarumque auctores iniquitatum ut, advocates istos et patronos habentes suae nequitiae, adulterentur, rapiant, occidant, et omnia mala faciant. Inducitur enim ab eis ante omnes deus Saturnus et huic sacrificant filios suos; qui genuit multos pueros de Rea, et insaniens comedit filios suos. Aiunt autem Iovem abscidisse sibi virilia et proiecisse in mare, unde Venus fabulose dicitur fuisse nata. Alligans autem suum patrem Iupiter proiecit in Tartarum. Secundus inducitur Iupiter, quem ferunt regem esse aliorum deorum et transformatum fuisse in animalia ut cum mortalibus mulieribus adulteria committeret. Inducunt enim hunc transformatum in taurum propter Europam et in aurum propter Dianam et in cignum propter Ledam et in satyrum propter Emptionem et in fulmen propter Semelem et ita genuisse ex his filios multos, Liberum videlicet, et Zetum et Amphionem, Herculem et Apollinem et Arthenicam et Perseum Castoremque et Pollucem et Helenam et Iunonem et Radamantum et Sarpedonem et novem filias quas appellaverunt Musas.
