Technique lab
These are the codified techniques memory athletes use. Learn one, then try it out below.
Where this idea comes from
The memory palace
Roman teachers of speaking told a story about the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos. A banquet hall fell in just after he stepped outside, and he could name the guests because he remembered where each one had sat. Cicero tells it in On the Orator (55 BCE), and an older Roman handbook, the Rhetorica ad Herennium (about 80s BCE), sets out the method: picture a building you know, and leave each thing to remember in a place along a walk through it.
One thing to hold: A walk through a house you know well, with one strange, vivid picture left in each room.
Why it matters: Speakers used it to give long speeches without notes, and it was taught for about two thousand years. Memory competitors still use it today.
What we don’t know: Nobody knows if the banquet story really happened. It may be a legend told to explain the method.