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FORGETTING THE ARS MEMORIAE: OVID, REMEDIA AMORIS 579–84

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2013

Patrick T. Beasom
Patrick T. Beasom*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Greensboro
*
[email protected]
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Extract

During his encounter with Lethaeus Amor in the Remedia amoris, in which he discusses techniques to forget a former lover, Ovid writes the following:

      quisquis amas, loca sola nocent: loca sola caveto;
      quo fugis? in populo tutior esse potes.
      non tibi secretis (augent secreta furores)
      est opus; auxilio turba futura tibi est.
      tristis eris, si solus eris, dominaeque relictae
      ante oculos facies stabit, ut ipsa, tuos.
This passage has been discussed in Hardie's treatment of Lethaeus Amor, and, while he directly addresses Ovid's use of loci in this passage as I shall below, his focus is on the rich intertextuality – textual remembrances – within the Remedia rather than the use of loci in the ars memoriae proper. Hardie points out numerous intertexts in the Remedia, using the character of Lethaeus Amor to highlight the paradox of a learned reader of love poetry being unable to forget the poetry he has read, despite this specific oblivion being a precondition for curing oneself of love (as clearly directed at Rem. am. 755–66). In this case, the loca sola Ovid warns against are ‘topics of solitude’ which ‘conjure up for the experienced reader scenes of erotic despair’, thus calling to mind the lover's own lovelorn state.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , December 2013 , pp. 903 - 906
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2013 

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References

1 Hardie, P., ‘Lethaeus Amor: the art of forgetting’, in Gibson, R., Green, S. and Sharrock, A. (edd.), The Art of Love: Bimillennial Essays on Ovid's Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris (Oxford, 2006)Google Scholar. For Simonides' ‘invention’ of mnemotechnics, see Plut. Mor. 346F. Aside from the Rhetorica ad Herennium (3.28–40), the ars memoriae is discussed by Cicero (De or. 2.351–60) and Quintilian (Inst. 11.2.1–51). See also Yates, F., The Art of Memory (Chicago, 1966), 1–49Google Scholar and Baroin, C., ‘Techniques, arts et pratiques de la mémoire en Grèce et à Rome’, Mètis 5 (2007), 135–60Google Scholar. Loci and vivid description, a topic also represented in this passage from the Rem. and which will be discussed below, are discussed by Vasaly, A., Representations: Images of the World in Ciceronian Oratory (Berkeley, 1993), 100–2Google Scholar.

2 Hardie (n. 1), 187. For loca sola and secreta as recollections of ill-fated lovers in poetry, see also Pinotti, P., Publio Ovidio Nasone, Remedia Amoris (Bologna, 1993), 260–2Google Scholar.

3 The likening of the accessing of images from loci to reading suggests an implicit connection between the verbal and the visual, specifically that the mental distribution of loci is analogous to writing. The idea of the mind as capable of receiving impressions via perception or imagination like wax from a seal is found elsewhere in Pl. Tht. 191c–d, Arist. Mem. 450a31, Theophr. Sens. 52, Sext. Emp. Math. 7.228.

4 See e.g. Rhet. Her. 4.60–2 (similtudo and exemplum); 4.68–9 (demonstratio). Compare Cicero's use of paene in conspectu animi in his discussion of the power of sight and of dwelling on an event in almost visual detail (De or. 3.160–1, 202) and Quintilian's use of oculi mentis (Inst. 8.3.62). Aristotle also speaks of phrases that appeal to the mind's eye (Rh. 3.11.1).

5 See Dion. Hal. Lys. 7 on Lysias' ability to use vivid description, enargeia, to make the listener feel that he is meeting the characters face-to-face.

6 This passage is also cited in Hardie's list of literary loca, (n. 1), 188–9, although the Ovidian intertext of Laodamia discussed below does not appear in his survey.

7 Here Ovid couches his lesson in another pointed textual remembrance, this time of Heroides 13, where we see Laodamia fixated on watching Protesilaus as he sails away (17–24) and eventually pining over a waxen imago (152–8). So lifelike is the portrait that it is more to her than just cera; it would be Protesilaus himself, if it had but a voice. Because this imago is tangible – or because she is mad with longing – it apparently approaches a level of verisimilitude beyond the imagines of the ars memoriae, which can only cause the lover to appear with a qualified ut ipsa (as at 584); to Laodamia, the bust would be the actual lover (Protesilaus erit). Neither mnemonic imagines nor waxen imagines can replace the absent beloved; both serve instead as a reminder that increases a lover's pain. Laodamia perished because she was unable to let go of her beloved's imago, a memory cue. If the student of the Remedia is to be healed, he must first recall Laodamia's poetic plight and then divest himself of similar cues, whether tangible or purely mnemonic.

8 In his discussion of the ars memoriae, Quintilian makes a statement about the power of revisiting loca to spur memory that is strikingly similar to Ovid's injunction: nam cum in loca aliqua post tempus reversi sumus, non ipsa agnoscimus tantum sed etiam quae in iis fecerimus reminiscimur (Inst. 10.2.17). For both Quintilian and Ovid, physical loca are imbued with memories of the activities conducted therein, just as mnemonic loca store cues that recall speech acts.

9 For Ovid's use of cera for tablet, see e.g. Am. 1.11.14 and 20; 1.12.23; Ars am. 1.438; Met. 9.522. Ovid uses cera of portrait busts at Am. 1.8.65.

10 See Hardie (n. 1), 174–5, 180, 184–5 for important Propertian intertexts. Pinotti (n. 2), 261 notes Propertius 1.18 in discussing Ovid's loca sola.

11 Similarly, Propertius' carving of Cynthia's name into the trees echoes Ecl. 10.53–4. See Hardie (n. 1), 176 for intertexts from Ecl. 10 in the Remedia.

12 This ‘just do the opposite’ scheme characterizes Ovidian erotodidaxis: the third book of the Ars amatoria often instructs women to do just the opposite of the men's lessons in Books 1 and 2, and the Remedia amoris itself teaches one simply to do the opposite of what was instructed in the Ars.

13 The Elder Seneca (Controv. 2.2.8–12) speaks of seeing Ovid declaiming as a youth. For discussion of whether Ovid's preferred genus dicendi was like that taught by Arellius Fuscus, whose pupil Ovid was, or Porcius Latro, see Fairweather, J., Seneca the Elder (Cambridge, 1981), 264–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar. E. Berti offers an extended treatment of the connection between declaimers and poetry, and Ovid in particular: Scholasticorum Studia. Seneca il Vecchio e la cultura retorica e letteraria della prima età imperiale (Pisa, 2007), 290–308Google Scholar.