The Ancient Way to Never Forget

Two and a half thousand years ago, the roof of a banquet hall in Greece collapsed. The bodies could not be recognized. One poet named every victim by remembering where each had been reclining. From that moment came the art of memory, the method Roman orators used to carry whole speeches in their heads. Here are its four laws, and how to build your first memory palace in two minutes. 0:00 The banquet 1:26 What we lost 2:50 The first law: memory loves places 4:31 The second law: the image must be strange 6:03 The third law: order is stronger than quantity 7:17 The fourth law: walk the road again 8:36 Your first palace SOURCES Cicero, De Oratore, Book II (the story of Simonides) Rhetorica ad Herennium, Book III (places and images) Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, Book XI, chapter 2 Plato, Phaedrus (the invention of writing) Seneca the Elder, Controversiae, preface to Book I Jonathan Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (1984) Maguire et al., Routes to remembering: the brains behind superior memory, Nature Neuroscience (2003) Dresler et al., Mnemonic Training Reshapes Brain Networks to Support Superior Memory, Neuron (2017) PICTURES Artist, Title (year), Museum #memory #memorypalace #philosophy