[20]
The first though is placed, as it were, in the forecourt;
the second, let us say, in the living-room; the remainder are placed in due order all round the impluvium1 and entrusted not merely to bedrooms and
parlours, but even to the care of statues and the
like. This done, as soon as the memory of the facts
requires to be revived, all these places are visited in
turn and the various deposits are demanded from
their custodians, as the sight of each recalls the
respective details. Consequently, however large the
number of these which it is required to remember,
all are linked one to the other like dancers
hand in hand, and there can be no mistake since
they join what precedes to what follows, no trouble
being required except the preliminary labour of
committing the various points to memory.
1 The impluvium was the light-well in the centre of the atrium with a cistern beneath it to catch the rainwater from the roof, which sloped inwards.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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