ABSTRACT
Most modern discussions of the ancient art of memory focus on the systems of topoi and loci. Yet the variety of techniques and the number of practical suggestions given by Quintilian demonstrate that training the memory in classical antiquity was a manypronged process. What you needed to memorize would determine which method should be employed. As Baddeley puts it: ‘Having a range of mnemonic strategies to hand can therefore be rather useful, even though one only uses them from time-to-time.’1 Equally interesting are the methods that they did not use in antiquity and why. Most important of all is what we call the ‘bottom line’: do these techniques work?
