Page 101 - Use Your Memory

8 The Roman Room System

The Romans were great inventors and practitioners of mnemonic
techniques, one of their most popular being the Roman Room.
The Romans constructed such a system easily. They imagined the
entrance to their house and their room and then filled the room
with as many objects and items of furniture as they chose - each
object and piece of furniture serving as a link-image onto which
they attached the things they wished to remember. The Romans
were particularly careful not to make a mental rubbish dump of
their room; precision and order (attributes of the left side of your
brain) are essential in this system.
A Roman might, for example, have constructed his imaginary
entrance and room with two gigantic pillars at either side of the
front door, a carved lion's head as his doorknob, and an exquisite
Greek statue on the immediate left as he walked in. Next to the
statue might have been a flowering plant; next to the plant, a large
sofa covered with the fur of one of the animals the Roman had
hunted; and, in front of the sofa, a large marble table on which
were placed goblets, a wine container, bowls of fruit, and so forth.
Let's say that the Roman then wished to remember to buy a pair
of sandals, to get his sword sharpened, to buy a new servant, to
tend to his grapevine, to polish his helmet, to talk to his child, and
so on. He would simply imagine the first pillar at the entrance of
his imaginary room festooned with thousands of sandals, the
leather polished and glistening, and the smell delighting his nos-
trils; he would imagine sharpening his sword on the right-hand
pillar, hearing the scraping as he did so, and feeling the blade as it
became sharper and sharper; his servant he would imagine riding
a roaring lion, while grapes he might remember by imagining his
exquisite statue totally entwined with a grapevine on which were
luscious grapes that he could imagine seeing and tasting so well
that he would actually salivate; his helmet he could imagine by
substituting the container of his imaginary flowering plant with
the helmet itself; finally, he could imagine himself on his sofa, his
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