Mnemotechnics and Virgil

Cicero, Quintilian and the anonymous author of the ad Herennium each describe the art and practice of using an artificial memory system to help aid remembrance. Each of the authors respective treatises offers an exploration of how both loci (places) and imagines (images) were used to facilitate remembrance of both res (things) and verba (words). The methods delineated by each author provide valuable insight into the visual process, used by educated Romans to retrieve and recall information stored in their memories. By understanding how remembering and recollection were inherently important to the Romans the modern reader can apprehend how Virgil, as a member of the Roman elite, either consciously or subconsciously, would portray his characters as being familiar not only with the system of artificial memory, but also with the Roman process of using different spaces and places to stimulate remembrance. This book looks at the rhetoricians discussions of the art of memory and posits that Virgil uses the artificial memory system features of sequential order, discriminability, and distinctiveness when describes the way his characters look at various images in the Aeneid.