American Philological Association

Mnemosyne in Oral Literature Author(s): James A. Notopoulos Source: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 69 (1938), pp. 465-493 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/283194 . Accessed: 24/04/2011 05:30
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XXVI.-Mnemosyne

in Oral Literature

JAMES A. NOTOPOULOS
TRINITY COLLEGE

The work of the late Milman Parry, on Homer, has contributed much to an understanding of the differences in literatures created by the spoken rather than the written word. Approaching the Homeric poems as oral poetry he proceeded on the principle of Aristarchus of getting the solution from the text, v/K trS XMecEs XLcns. Using form as the clue to funcas and tion, establishing the character of thought, he style reconstructed the oral basis of the Homeric poems. In a series of brilliant papers 1 he has laid a new foundation for the study of Homer. It is time now to apply the results of his work to certain problems which are implicit in the oral literature of the Greeks. Among these is the importance of Mnemosyne. When Greek oral literature was committed to writing we find embedded in it the mention of Mnemosyne, which is the personification of an important and vital force in oral composition. Its importance is evident in the prominent place it occupies in early Greek theology. Hesiod tells us that Earth lay with Heaven, and from this primaeval union were born Theia, Rhea, Themis, and Mnemosyne.2 These Titans, says Rose, "are very ancient figures, little worshipped anywhere in historical Greece, and belonging to a past so remote that the earliest Greeks of whose opinions we have any certain knowledge saw them surrounded with a haze of extreme antiquity." 3 The inclusion of Mnemosyne as one of the most
1For a bibliography cf. H. Levin, " Portrait of a Homeric Scholar," Classical Journal xxxII (1937), 266.
2 Theogony 45f.

3 H. J. Rose, Handbook of GreekMythology (New York, E. P. Dutton, 1929),

21.

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ancient deities is evidence of the importance in which this function was held by the earliest Greeks. But the inclusion of Mnemosyne among the Titans is puzzling. " Mnemosyne," says Rose, "is a pure abstraction, Memory personified, and 4 It is clearly has no business among the Titans proper." evident, however, that this legend preserves the primaeval importance of memory among pre-literate Greeks, and, rightly or wrongly, she is included among the Titans, the first generation of the theogony of Earth and Heaven. Hesiod, standing at the threshold of the post-heroic age, has preserved for us a legend which reveals the importance of Memory among oral peoples. Folk-memory has preserved in this legend the once supreme importance of a divinity who sank into a minor cult 5 with the advent of written literature. Supplementing Hesiod on the question of the importance of memory in the oral literature of the early Greeks is the evidence of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, dated not later than the seventh century.6 When Hermes discovered the lyre, he sang the story of the immortal gods, and in his song he honored Mnemosyne, the mother of the Muses, first among the gods, for, says the poem significantly, "the son of Maia was of her following." 7 Then follow the rest of the gods in the order of their age, thus revealing the first rank that Mnemosyne occupied as a goddess in the theology of oral peoples. The further we go into the development of written literature, the less important Mnemosyne becomes as the written word triumphed over memory and the spoken word. But even so, the written literature from the sixth century on reflects the part that memory once played in oral poetry, now no longer a living force but a convention which poets invoke as a prelude. In Solon's time Memory and the Muses were crystallized into
4 Op. cit. (see note 3), 21. 6 Cf. I.G. II.24692; Schol. Oedipus Col. 100. 6 T. W. Allen, W. R. Halliday, E. E. Sikes, The Homeric Hymns2 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1936), 276. 7 Hymn to Hermes 429; cf. Pap. Lond. 46.115.

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an elegiac formula: KalZvpos'OXviArlov rEva A&yXa& Mvtr.ioarbvrls

8 MooaaLIHLepl?8E, KXV7T #LOOL e3VXOCVC.

Terpander echoes it in a different metrical form:

Tras Mvalias 2TrEv8w&/iv
7ratatv Mcboaas 9 . .

The poet in the fifth and fourth centuries still kept up the convention. Euripides in Hercules Furens has the poet sing of Memory:
Tn

L yEpwv aot10

6os KeXaSet Mvag,ooIavav

alluding to the old oral poet, the yepwovof Homeric poetry, who exercised his craft by means of memory. This association of the poet with Memory had already in the fourth century become a commonplace, as Plato's remark reveals:
KaOTirep ol rTOlrat, 5co/uaL apx6ouevos rjs&Sl'yao'Ws
e7rLKaXEiToeC0.11 Mv77Loaivvf7v

Mobvas re Kal

All these references to Mnemosyne in the written literature of Greece are echoes of a once significant force in an oral literature. Memory in written literature is essentially based on the written word, whereas for the oral poet it was entirely associated with the spoken word. The Iliad and the Odyssey, unlike the Aeneid, are not products of written literature, but of an age in which the spoken word was the basis of creation. Man in primitive Greek society was, as Marcel Jousse points out in his penetrating book on Le Style Oral, a "mnemotechnician." The dactylic hexameter is the product of oral
Solon 13 (Poetae lyrici Graeci,4 ed. T. Bergk [Leipzig, Teubner, 1882]); cf. G. Kaibel, Epigrammata Graeca (Berlin, G. Reimer, 1878), 789; A. Plassart, "Inscriptions de Thespies," Bulletin de Correspondance Hellenique L (1926),
403.

9 Terpander No. 3 (Bergk). 10Hercules Furens 679.

1

Euthydemus 275 d; cf. Pindar 01. vmII.74.

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literature; it is a mnemotechnique made by "l'utilisation consciente et rationnelle des lois automatiques et profondes de la memoire. . .. pour aider la memoire du Recitateur." 12 Differing entirely from literature which was first composed with the written word and then recited, oral literature is based on a spontaneous and natural creation in which the poet composed orally by means of formulas and fixed patterns, all of which were based on memory. To understand properly the nature and function of Mnemosyne in the technique of oral poetry we must, at the outset, differentiate the various uses which memory might have in oral poetry. From the oral poet, as we see him in Homer, we learn that one of the functions of the oral poet was to peravpcsv 13; it was the poet's task petuate in memory the icXca to conserve living experiences and transmit them to posterity. This might be called the use of memory as an end and is illustrated in the picture of Demodocus.14 In the case of was oral poetry the only way to perpetuate the KXea&avp&vc like record to attached a not be which could permanent song, its constant achieve repetiobject by writing, but could only tion. It is in this sense that immortality in oral poetry depended upon constant repetition. Plato could admirably be used to illustrate this point in epic poetry when he discusses
the part memory plays in immortality: XA0 yapf' T7rLo-T7r r cr'EL TrqV TnrS aTrLo-qLs jpJvv fYroLOvaTa &LVTL 0o0os, /EEXEr c Trav If we substitute recitation by the oral poet, in e7rLarTfl,Plv.15 we have an insight into the relation of the place of lcEXEr?i,

memory to immortality in epic poetry. The use of memory as an end is furthermore connected with utility as well as immortality. This accounts for the fact that oral literature took as its subject so much other
12 Marcel Jousse, Le Style Oral rythmique et mnemotechnique chez les Verbomoteurs (Paris, G. Beauchesne, 1925), 191. 13Homer Iliad Ix.524f. 14 Cf. Pindar Nem. I.12, and Herodotus I.1 for a similar reflection in written literature. 15Symposium 208a.

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non-poetic material like genealogies, chronologies, laws, etc.16 The association of utility and memory in oral literature is well illustrated in the study that Prof. J. L. Myres has made of Folk-memory.17 With consummate skill he has shown the coherent and trustworthy foundation of genealogies preserved in folk-memory, and illustrated it with examples from Iceandic and Maori history. This organic relation of utility with memory is observed by Plutarch in The Oraclesat Delphi: "there is nothing in poetry more serviceable to speech than that the ideas communicated, by being bound up and interwoven with verse, are better remembered and kept firmly in mind. Men in those days had to have a memory for many things." 18 The oral poet as a mnemotechnician preserved the useful by binding it in verse, by forging a metrical pattern which facilitated and guarded against mistake the information to be preserved.'9 Memory therefore is equally important in conserving the useful as well as perpetuating the immortal in oral literature; the poet is the incarnate book of oral peoples, a fact which not only explains the existence of what from our modern point of view seems non-poetic in their work, but also accounts in part for the paratactic nature of the poetic form of oral poetry and literature.20 But of far greater importance in oral poetry is the use of memory as a means in the process of creation. The part that memory plays in the creative process of oral literature shows memory to be of two kinds, static and creative.21 An example
16M. Jousse, op. cit. (see note 12), 126-131; Aristotle, Problems xix.28; Plato Laws 793a; Apollodorus XpovLK&, Die Fragmenteder Griechischen Historiker, ed. F. Jacoby (Berlin, Weidmann, 1929), Part 2. B. 1025-1044. 17J. L. Myres, Who Were the Greeks? (Berkeley, University of California, 1936), 291-366; cf. J. L. Myres, "Folk-Memory," Folk-LorexxxvI (1926), 12-34. 18Plutarch Moralia 407F (in Loeb Cl. Lib.). 19Cf. M. Jousse, op. cit. (see note 12), 191. 20 Cf. B. A. Van Groningen, Paratactische compositie in de ondste Grieksche literatur (Amsterdam, Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers-Maatschappij, 1937); cf. the review by J. Tate in Cl. Rev. LI (1937), 174-5. 21Cf. Bergson's distinction between memory which imagines and memory which repeats. H. Bergson, Matter and Memory (London, S. Sonnenschein & Co., 1911).

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of memory as a static factor in oral poetry is given by Parry: "an oral poetry practiced by guilds of singers with masters and apprentices would tend to a more faithful keeping of poems which had won fame, and that one singer might win such a name that his disciples would find their profit in keeping his poetry as nearly without change as they could; but then they are no longer singers but rhapsodes, their task is not of creation."22 If, for example, Homer were the best oral poet, the guild of the Homeridae would memorize his version of the poems and perpetuate them by constant repetition. They would be rhapsodes, and an example in later written literature is the rhapsode in the Ion of Plato, who memorized Homer by heart from a written text. In the period of oral poetry, however, the rhapsode would memorize it from an oral version which was to be found only in the ibrEa 'rrepoevra of the singers. This use of memory, however, is retentive rather than creative. The study of the composition of oral poetry,23 as it survives today in Jugoslavia, has thrown considerable light on the problems of Homeric composition of oral poetry and the part that memory plays in it. The work of Krauss, Murko, and Parry on this problem has shown that the creative r61e that memory plays in oral composition is integrally connected with the formula of the traditional diction of oral poetry; this Parry studied in detail in Homer, both as to its form and function. Oral poetry of all nations, it has been shown,24is essentially
22M. Parry, "Studies in the Epic Technique of Oral Verse-Making," II,
Harvard Studies in Classical Philology XLIII (1932), 16, 17.

23F. S. Krauss, Slavische Volkforschungen (Leipzig, W. Heims, 1908); M. Murko, La poesie populaire ipique en Yugoslavie au debut du XX6 siecle (Paris, Champion, 1929); H. M. and N. K. Chadwick, The Growthof Literature (Cambridge, At the University Press, 1936), ii.299-456. 24 Cf. Jousse, op. cit. (see note 12), 113; Parry, "Studies in the Epic Technique of Oral Verse-Making," I, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology XLI (1930), 77, 78; H. M. and N. K. Chadwick, op. cit. (see note 23), 1.22, 44, 62, 564; T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (New York, Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1935), 125, 278-9.

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composed of fixed, stereotyped cliches or formulas, ranging all the way from phrases of fixed epithet to whole lines and even whole passages. The outstanding feature of the formula in epic poetry is its repetition, the cause of which was little understood until recently when its importance in Homeric oral composition was shown by Parry. Unlike the poet of written literature who composes with pen and paper, and is not bound by the necessity of time required in the composition, the oral poet must compose with the spoken word, must do so spontaneously and consecutively. He has therefore certain problems arising in oral composition which do not arise in written composition. Most pressing of these is the need of "word-groups all made to fit his verse and tell what he has to tell. In composing he will do no more than put together for his needs phrases which he has often heard or used himself, and which, grouping themselves in accordance with a fixed pattern of thought, come naturally to make the sentence and the verse." 25 By means of these ready-made and traditional word-groups he is able to compose orally, filling in a verse or part of a verse with one of these formulas which leave him time to think of the next verse. Their recurrence is necessary if oral composition is to take place, for without them the oral poet would falter in the midst of his composition; his creation, unlike that of the poet of written literature, involves not the creation of new phrases but rather the use of traditional phrases. The frequency and number of these formulas illustrate the creative function of memory in oral composition. One can readily see the amount of memory required before one could create orally, if he multiplies the case of the single formula, as Parry says, "by all these which are to be found in the two poems, and which require the 250 pages of Schmidt's ParallelHomer for their listing." 26 Parry computes 25,000 or 26,000
26Parry, op. cit. (see note 24), 1.77. For examples of how the poet makes use of these word-groups in oral composition cf. pp. 85-86. 26 Parry, ibid., 89.

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repetitions in Homer's 27,853 or so verses.27 Such a survey shows that the poet could not exercise his craft without memory. The verse is created on the basis of a vast complex system of formulas which the poet had to memorize as part of his craft. Before he could compose he had to memorize a vast number of word-groups which would serve as the basis of his improvisation. Without keeping in memory all these formulas, which are the oral diction out of which his poetry is made, no oral poetry could be possible. Memory is the means by which the poet creates orally. It is a creative factor in the very process of oral creation; it is an inherent part of it and without it no poet could create. As may be seen there is no place for passive memory in this technique, for the formulas vary in length and are fused together in the very heat of oral recitation; like the notes of the scale they are constantly used in new context. It is in this sense that Mnemosyne is at the basis of oral composition; without memory the poet could not retain the vast and complex formulas, groups, and systems which he needed to formulate his verses. For the poet of the hexameter, thought was synonymous with memory, for he could only think out his lines on the basis of memorized formulas. The very elasticity of memory essential to the expression of thought by the poet is witness to its creative character. For thought and memory are so close
in the process of composition
27 Parry,

that etymologically

Mootca is

connected with Mnemosyne,28 Moo aL, i.e. * Movaat, the Reibid., 90.
28Memory not only extends to word-groups, but also to entire scenes.

Walter Arend in his book Die Typischen Scenen bei Homer (Berlin, Weidmann, 1933) has analyzed the Homeric poems and shown that certain actions are repeated with the same details and words. Instances of such typical scenes are arrival, sacrifice, journey by land or sea, arming, dressing, etc. Though Arend does not recognize the implications of his analysis, Parry has pointed out that these type schemes show the schematization of Homer's composition. As in the formula the poet in his apprenticeship to the older singer retained in his memory ways to develop action, so that memory is at the basis of the oral technique ranging from noun-epithet formulas to manner of developing action.
Cf. Parry's review, Class. Phil. xxxi (1936), 357-60.

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minders.29 It is not unreasonable then to think that though inspiration came from the Muses, behind inspiration stood Mnemosyne, the mother of the Muses, who was intimately connected with oral creation. The oral poet in the absence of the written text learned his craft and material through the ?rea7rrepoevra. The amazing memory of a Jugoslav guslar throws light on the ability of an oral poet to recite a poem of the length of the Iliad or Odyssey. Krauss in studying the mnemonic faculty of the Jugoslav guslars reports that a guslar named Milovan could recite 40,000 lines in a row, and that he was only ordinary; popular opinion credits the good guslar with knowing from memory 30,000 to even 100,000 verses.30 In view of this modern parallel in an oral society it is not impossible to assign the Iliad or the Odyssey to a single oral poet. For memory was the peculiar faculty and province of the oral poet; he could no more do without memory than we, the children of the written word, can do without books. By memorizing the vast and complicated systems of formulaic diction the poet could call upon his memory not only for the exact phrase to fill out a particular verse, but also for the creation of the general pattern of the poem. Memory was not only the end for which the poet strove, but was also the creative factor of the means in his inspiration. Without her, oral composition was impossible. As the foundation of the technique of oral poetry, Mnemosyne was rightly invoked as "mother of the Muses." 31
29 Cf. G. Curtius,

Principles

of Greek Etymology5, trans.

by Wilkins

and

England (London, Murray, 1886), 1.377; Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Glaubeder Hellenen (Berlin, Weidmann, 1931), 1.251. 30Jousse, op. cit. (see note 12), 113, 114. 31Evidence in written literature of the importance of memory as a creative factor in oral literature is preserved in a tradition recorded by Pausanias (Ix.29.2) which states that the Heliconian muses are three in number: MeXkr7), Mv'j,l, 'AOLtr. This religious tradition throws light on the relation of Memory as a force in poetry (cf. Homer's technique of personification of a force without that force necessarily being a regular god in theology, Kvboryos, KOp,Iliad xvIII. 535). In this tradition memory is personification of a factor in oral poetry; she is here identified directly with the poetic process. Though different from the

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II The Homeric poems were not essentially changed in character with their commitment to writing. Though several centuries may have elapsed from the date of their oral composition to that of their commitment to writing, the intimate connection of memory with oral composition conserved the poems through this period with little change in their essential oral features.32 Their form still betrays the characteristics of oral literature. With the change of the method of composition from a spontaneous natural oral style to a written composition Mnemosyne lost her function. Written literature preserves her in an inherited theology; poets at the threshold of the transition still begin their poetry with an invocation to Mnemosyne as once the oral poet did, but now it is a mere convention. Thucydides, however, gives evidence that folk-memory was still a force in his day; he mentions an oral tradition still alive among the Peloponnesians: XyovaL
6b KaOlot r&d (7a0ecTaTa
.. &6&E'YE'ivoL.
.33

rIEXorovvroofslv tvYtpr T rap& Trv

7rpTrEpov

Here we have an echo of the strong roots of folk-memory even at an advanced literary age. The accuracy of such folk-memory with regard to genealogies, as
Myres has proven, merits the judgment of ra4cao-rara by the
Hesiodic tradition it reflects essentially the same emphasis which oral poetry placed on memory. The theological expression of a vital force in the life of the oral peoples is consonant with the personification processes of the primitive mind. The non-metaphorical expression of this important force is found in the Homeric vocabulary where besides the retentive connotation of the verb which we have an echo of its creative force in the imperative up.i'.lvro ,ut/L,VjaKCW means to take thought for something, to consider, think, where an active mental be ae KalOsos aVTOSr (Odyssey process is evolved. When Circe tells Odysseus uvffretL xii.38), we have an echo of the oral invocation of the poet to the muses for inspiration, which in his case involved the proper functioning of the memory with respect to formulas.
32 Pausanias

vii.26.6;

cf. J. L. Myres,

op. cit. (see note 17), 100; Parry,

op. cit. (see note 24), I.144f. For the tendency to push the introduction of letters to Greece after 1000 B.C. see Rhys Carpenter, "The Antiquity of the Greek Alphabet," A.J.A. xxxvII (1933), 8-29. in M. Tod, GreekHistorical 33Thucydides 1.9; cf. the officials called iuvilj.oves Inscriptions (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1933), No. 25, who seem to be a survival from the oral tradition.

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historian. Though folk-memory persisted, the introduction of letters entirely changed the method of composition and with this change Mnemosyne lost her vitality as a force in literature. The written word, as it became supreme, narcotized memory. The transition, however, from oral to written literature did not come about without a struggle. A prTpa of Lycurgus forbade the putting of the laws into writing.34 In Caesar's De Bello Gallico we have a glimpse of the struggle which must have been waged against the encroachment of the written word upon the spoken word. The Druids, he reports, "learn by heart a great number of verses, . . . and they do not think it proper to commit these utterances to writing, although in almost all other accounts they make use of Greek letters. I believe they have adopted the practice for two reasonsthat they do not wish the rule to become common property, nor those who learn the rule to rely on writing and so neglect the cultivation of the memory, and, in fact, it does usually happen that the assistance of writing tends to relax the diligence of the student and the action of the memory." 35 This commentary of Caesar on the Druid opposition to letters and Lycurgus' law forbidding the commitment of his laws into writing reflect the persistence of the oral tradition and the premium an oral society puts on memory. The dislike for the written word, it is to be noted, is accounted for in part by the weakening effect it had upon memory which was prized highly among oral peoples.36
34Plutarch Life of Lycurgus xmII; for the oral character of laws cf. S. H. Butcher, "The Written and the Spoken Word," Some Aspects of the Greek Genius3 (London, Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1904), 183-187. 35Caesar De Bello Gallico vi.14 (in Loeb Cl. Lib.); cf. Quint. Inst. xi.2.9, cited by W. H. Thompson in his edition of Phaedrus of Plato (London, Whittaker & Co., 1868), 136. For oral literature in the sacred literature of India cf. Chadwick, op. cit. (see note 23), II.603-625.
36

J. L. Myres, "Folk-Memory,"

Folk-Lore xxxvII (1926), 234: "In mediaeval

and modern history, this kind of folk-memory for events does not count for much, all the principal occurrences being established by contemporary documents, official and otherwise . . . This, however, while testifying to the

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The existence of this prejudice against the encroachment of the written word is furthermore reflected in the legend of the 'culture hero' Prometheus, who brought benefits to mankind and was punished by Zeus. Among the gifts which he gave to mankind were: "the combining of letters, creative mother of the Muses' arts, wherewith to hold all things in memory " (,uviPrometheus' gift of letters I,-LV lra&vTrv, ,louovaoUrop' py'avyrv).37 in wherewith to hold all things memory is a radical and rather opposite view to that of the conservative members of oral society. Here we see the clash between the two views of early peoples on letters, the conservative element of the oral society maintaining that it destroys memory, while the progressive element maintained that it would conserve rather than destroy memory. This clash is echoed furthermore in the story of Theuth and Thamus in Plato's Phaedrus. Those who do not understand the background of oral literature look upon the story as an invention of Plato, but it is evident that it is in its essence a genuine tale preserved in folk-memory, harking back to a time in oral society when the issue of the written word vs. the spoken word was as real and living as it was at the time of Lycurgus and among the Druids in the first century B.C. Theuth is a culture hero like Prometheus; he discovers number, reckoning, geometry, and letters. Upon his discovery of letters he submitted them to King Thamus saying: "This invention, O king, will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memories; for it is an elixir of re yap memory and wisdom that I have discovered" (Uvt77,urs
superior efficiency of written records, illustrates also their disastrous by-effectfrom the folklore point of view-in superseding the practice of oral tradition, as well as the data which it may conserve. In particular, the popular use of calendars and diaries, and of consecutive numeration of the years, instead of reckoning by reigns, priesthoods, or the generations of family history, transfers all this kind of folk-memory from what may be described as its natural content or background to an artificial and mechanical scheme." For the naturalness of oral poetry cf. M. Parry, "Whole Formulaic Verses in Greek and Southslavic Heroic Song," T.A.P.A. LXIV(1933), 181. 37Aeschylus Prometheus Bound 461 (in Loeb. Cl. Lib.).

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the same

Kal ao4-as 4aptpaKov bvpeiOr).3s This story represents

view as Prometheus. In the 'culture heroes', like Prometheus and Theuth, we have the dramatic representation of a group in early peoples who saw in writing an aid to memory; in Zeus and Thamus, on the other hand, we have the dramatic expression of the conservative, traditional group of oral society which, like the Druids, believed that letters might cause the weakening of memory which was of momentous importance to oral peoples. In the tale of the Egyptian Theuth s9 we have another echo of an important struggle that was carried on, analogous to our modern struggle of the hand made vs. machine made. This echo is preserved in the form of a legend which Plato dramatized and adapted to his philosophic purposes. The opposition to letters is rationalized by King Thamus as follows: "Most ingenious Theuth, one man has the ability to beget arts, but the ability to judge of their usefulness or harmfulness to their users belongs to another; and now you, who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that which they really possess. For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir (4apmuaKov) not of memory, but of
reminding (tvroituvjIcos)." 40
3s Phaedrus 274c (in Loeb Cl. Lib.); cf. Philebus 18a; Euripides Palamedes H. Diels, Fragmenteder Vorsokratiker3 frg. 582 (Nauck): XrnltsO4&p/AaK'; (Berlin, Weidmann, 1912), II, Dialex. 9 (648, 14 f):
iuval.a Kat es 7ravra xpjia,CjUov; cf. A. E. Taylor,

ikytorrov Kal K&dXXLo-roTV tEbpr7Ea Varia Socratica (Oxford, J. Parker

& Co., 1911), 127. 39For the historicity and place of Theuth cf. G. Maspero, Popular Stories Ancient of Egypt (London, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1915), LI (Int.), 20, 31, 129, 150. 40Phaedrus 274e-275a (in Loeb Cl. Lib.). Note the aptness of the word to distinguish memory through letters from the memory of oral lit7r6ib,ur)ots erature; cf. S. H. Butcher, op. cit. (see note 34), 188, n. 2. For Plato's awareness of the oral tradition in prehistoric times cf. Timaeus 23c and Laws 886c, and for the natural association of memory with childhood cf. Timaeus 26b.

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[1938

These echoes of the struggle that took place in the transition period between oral and written literature, as preserved in Plato's dramatic form, are the only context in which we can hope to understand the opposition of the spoken vs. the written word in Plato's philosophy. It will be seen that Plato's opposition to books and his championing of the spoken word, which is integrally connected with memory in oral literature, is not a new element but is the reappearance in Plato's philosophy of the old struggle between memory and letters. The memory which Plato advocates, it will be seen, is not the memory of the written word, which is simply a static and retentive memory, but the creative memory of the oral literature which is vital and synonymous with thinking itself. Plato's opposition to the written word is a philosophic analysis of the primitive dislike of the written word, which was a lifeless thing compared to the spoken word, as exemplified in the natural, spontaneous and vivid tonality of oral composition. Plato's thought, it will be shown, is based on the context of oral literature, and he shares the belief with all oral peoples that the spoken word is closer to the heart of philosophy than lifeless books which are removed from reality by their mechanical and symbolic nature. To Plato, who ever seeks to grasp the original, philosophy can only be practiced in an oral context where the dialectician like the oral poet composes with the aid of memory alone. Plato's belief that the written word is only an image of the living and breathing word of the philosopher 41 is, as in oral literature, inevitably bound up with memory. In the context of oral literature memory is equally a creative factor in dialectic. Memory which plays such a great part in Plato's philosophy is a reappearance in philosophy of the vital r6le it once had in the creation of oral epic poetry. Plato recognizes that memory and the spoken word are interrelated. Furthermore his association of memory and the spoken word in the Phaedrus is bound up with his conviction that philosophy should be based upon those forces which make for vitality,
41

Phaedrus 276a.

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naturalness and spontaneity in human expression. The written word is, like the rhapsodists' use of memory, simply retentive of what was created. The oral poet and philosopher make use of memory as a creative factor. That Plato is not creating something new in his use of memory and his emphasis on the spoken word is evident from the study of the part memory plays in Greek philosophy. With the introduction of writing memory becomes a mere convention in literature; it was kept most alive in folk-memory, religion,42 and philosophy where it continued to keep its vitality. It first appears in our evidence in Pythagoreanism. Pythagoras, as Burnet has shown,43preferred the spoken word and did not commit his thought to writing. "It was not," he says, "till Alexandrian times that any one ventured to forge books in his name. The writings ascribed to the first Pythagoreans were also forgeries of the same period." Veneration for the spoken word of the Master, avros Nqa,and the story of Hippasus' death for revealing secrets point to a strong oral tradition in Pythagoreanism. Among the followers of v aOKeiv) 44 was an Pythagoras the exercise of memory (Auv/un important duty. The importance of memory in the Pythagorean thought and way of life is preserved in Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras,45where we are told that the Pythagoreans called their philosophy 'AKobugtara, or r-Tov aKovaoUaTLKcuv ctXoaokla, thus showing the importance in which the spoken word was held by the school. Transmission was oral, as in the case of the Druids, and this was not because of the absence of letters but rather because of their profound conviction of the superiority of the spoken over the written word. So deep was their veneration for the spoken word and its handmaiden memory, that Pythagorean teachings, as Burnet has shown,46were not
42 Cf. Plutarch Moralia 397c, 402d; Tacitus Annales 11.54. 43J. Burnet, Early GreekPhilosophy4 (London, A. & C. Black, Ltd., 1930),

92. 44Diogenes Laertius vIII.22.

45Iambl. V. P. 82, in Diels, op. cit. (see note 38), ii.280.4, p. 358.

46J. Burnet, op. cit. (see note 43), 277-284.

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committed to writing till later. This non-existence of written Pythagorean literature which gave rise in later ages to the fiction of Pythagorean silence,47 reveals the extent to which the oral tradition survived even as late as the fifth century. Behind this phenomenon we see how important the practice of memory was in this oral society. Iamblichus preserves a picture of the ritual of mnemonics which reminds us of the
Ka monastic ideals of the Middle Ages: 'ovro 6e ~ev KaTreXELV re Kal4pal6oieva, Kcal r'TO. aa-Kog.evua r .vrJ'7 ra&vra /teXP bLaoa'E'evTv rov Kal re ras raS a6cVraiELs Toro v aKcpoaoaeLs, ,ueXpL V avaKeva'eaOcu
vvarTaL rapascxeaOaL rT LCavOavov Kal bCa/luvtovevov, orL EKeLVOa(TLV,
ev Cp yvw77Uv c(vXaoa'ELv. TrLI. KaCL 'yLVWCa'KeLV 6OeL IAv/fjl V Kal TroXX\v aar-rs

oOvyovv ao(6apa rl)v

....

av TE Kal er7LAXeLav irOLOuvro wyV4vaaC

avIaTaro 0 ra xOes yev6ooeva EK fris KOLiTrs av)p ov Trporepov IIvOa'ypeLos Kal . . KaCL yap ri/lreLplav E7rtLor'71/Al otvv ,rpos I/eL'OV avaCl?vrl?aOel7. in which The importance >p6vrlaLvTrov 8vaaOaL pvr1ijuoveVeLv.48

memory was held is shown not only in their oral transmission and training but also in their philosophy. Memory was represented by the number Ten which was considered the most perfect number,49 and the music of the spheres revolving in unison was called Mvt71oaovv7.5? The importance of Memory in Pythagoreanism is to be connected with the Orphic religious background of its thought. The Orphics, like the Druids of whom Caesar speaks, preserved the secrets and doctrines of the sect orally.51 The cardinal doctrine of Orphism and Pythagoreanism, the transmigration of souls, was intimately bound up with memory which was the link between this world and the life after death. Pythagoras is said to have remembered having been Euphorbus
47A. E. Taylor, Aristotle and His Predecessors (Chicago, The Open Court Publishing Co., 1927), 39, n. 1; cf. Olympiodorus in Platonis Phaedonem CommentariaA 1.13; Isocrates Bousiris 28. 48 Iambl. V. P. 164-6 in Diels, op. cit. (see note 38), ii.282, p. 361-2. 49Diels, op. cit., 1.236.13, p. 305; 235.33, p. 303. 50 Porphyry Vita Pythagorae 131. 1 Cf. 'Iepol A6oyo; 0. Kern, Orphicorum Fragmenta (Berlin, Weidmann, 1923), 140f.

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in the Trojan war, as well as other characters, and his soul is said to have received from Hermes the gift of remembering all the plants and animals in which it had resided.52 On the thin gold plates which were discovered at Thurii were found Orphic verses which though of late date refer back to the fifth century or earlier.53 In these verses we get a picture of the halls of Hades wherein is a divine fountain of Memory from which any one may drink who says he is the child of Heaven and Earth.54 In the oracle of Trophonius in Lebadeia,55 Mnemosyne was the name of one of the two springs in the cavern of Trophonius, the other being called Lethe. The symbolic significance of the fountain of Lethe of which one drank in order to forget all other matters, and the fountain of Mnemosyne of which one drank in order to remember what was revealed by the oracle, shows the extent to which the oral tradition with its stress on memory survived not only in philosophy but in religion as well. Oral literature persisted in both Pythagoreanism and Orphism, and in their doctrines Memory was enshrined as a goddess of great importance. The emphasis on the spoken word and the vitality of memory in these systems show that there is no distinct break in the fortleben of oral literature in Greece. The oral tradition though overshadowed by written literature in the sixth and fifth centuries continues to be a vital force in Orphism and Pythagoreanism. Mnemosyne and the spoken word survived in the &Kobvarara and mnemonics of the latter and in the use of oral tradition in oracles and the Mysteries. It is from these that Plato received as a heritage the significance and importance of the spoken word and memory. And as he did in the case of much that he received from tradition Plato made the spoken word and memory alive and vital again, adding new significance and depth to their meaning.
Diels, op. 63W. C. K. 1935), 172. 64 Kern, op. 66Pausanias
62

cit., 1.24.20, p. 30.

Guthrie, Orpheus and GreekReligion (London, Methuen & Co.,

cit. (see note 51), 32a, p. 105; cf. 297c 2, p. 310. xx.39.8, 13; cf. Pindar Isth. vi.75.

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The place that memory occupies in Plato's thought can only be fully understood by setting it in the context of oral literature and the recognized superiority of the spoken over the written word. The conflict between Thamus and Theuth is another phase of the conflict between memory in the oral tradition and memory in the written tradition. We have in Theuth the dramatic expression of a new order in which memory is made to rely on external symbols for its preservation. On the other hand King Thamus represents the preservation of memory in its pristine vitality as illustrated in the oral tradition of poetry. He objects to Theuth's invention because it would impair the creative character of memory. Plato in his explanation of the story decides against Theuth and sides with Thamus because the function of memory in philosophy, whose dialectic is oral in character,56 is to give life, vitality, and naturalness, which are the attributes of the spoken word. It is the creative use of memory, which is movementof thought, rather than a fixed formalized retention of it in the written word, that Plato advocates. Memory in the oral context is associated in Plato with the original, and in a written context with the use of images. If we are to understand Plato's rejection of memory in the written context and his defense of memory in the oral tradition we must relate it to his theory of original vs. image. Memory in the written tradition relies on external symbols and, like the mathematician who relies on external symbols, is inferior to memory in the oral tradition. Memory in the oral tradition, like the dialectic in Plato's "Divided Line", proceeds unencumbered by symbolism. Oral memory is important in thought because it is direct and free from symbolism; memory in its written context is, like the book, a lifeless elcoXov. The written word, however, like the image may be a stepping stone to the original, but the memory of the philosopher must in its creative apprehension be similar to dialectic. Without memory, knowledge could not be possible for the philosopher,
56 Cf. the etymology

of aLaXEKTiLKI.

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for knowledge is not learning from a written book but a creative recollection of innate values. For the philosopher, as for the oral poet, memory is not a mechanical retention of something learned from a book 57but the creative apprehension of thought or poetry in the soul. The contrast between memory in the written context and memory in the oral context is further contrasted in terms of 564aand ern-ir7r . Thamus tells Theuth that letters will give to students aoOLas c66av rather than aXO7ELav; they will become instead of ao-ol.58 Memory in its relation to ao4ia bo6oTaocoo is creative, i.e. memory is at the basis of the soul's recollection of the world of ideas. Such a memory is intimately connected with dialectic which, like the literary form of the dialogue of Plato's dialogues, reveals its oral basis and its preoccupation solely with the spoken word. Furthermore this memory shares in the creative task of dialectic, in its movement upward,
in its vital oral task of a,tbvaaoaL .
. . 3oo0-Oat.59

Memory in

the written context, on the other hand, is unable to proceed without the images and their imperfect and illusory nature
which characterizes 66/a; it isbr6buvLvraLs; its written X6oyos is bandied about (KvXLVEZTraL) like an object of 564a 60among those

who understand and those who have no interest in it; the written X6yosalways needs its father, the oral X6yos,to help it, for it has no power to protect itself. The absence of life and
avjvaL,s, which

is the quality

of Being,61 relegates

"written

memory" into the realm of 864a, the image, the lifeless, the derivative. The presence of the living power of reason in oral memory renders thought able to defend itself in argument, and makes reason the natural handmaiden of dialectic; the oral nature of reason keeps philosophy from becoming set as a 'dogma'; any fixed form is likely to hinder and delay living insight; reason keeps philosophy as a living process,
7 This faculty is bvr,voir)ats; cf. Phaedrus 275a.
58

Phaedrus 275b.

69 Ibid. 275e.

60Ibid. 275e.
61

Sophist 247e.

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in need of constant exercise to perpetuate itself; reason is creative, seeking immortality through continual oral discussion.62 Thus this association of memory in the written and
oral context with the opposites 66ca-t-:7rLaTr,ul reveals the depth

Memory is not Behind the oral tradition is memory, and philosophy is essentially an oral expression of thought. As Mnemosyne is the mother of TrepEvrTa poetry so is she the mother of philosophy. The eirEa and X6yov 6L66vaL are correlative expressions of memory. In oral poetry the poet creates through memory; in philosophy the dialectician proceeds by recollecting the knowledge of the deas which the soul knows but has forgotten in this world. The philosopher must depend on his memory of truth and its oral expression in order to apprehend the truth in the horizon of the Good. Both oral poetry and oral dialectic found their true being in Mnemosyne.
aoila, but without it there can be no dialectic. Memory in philosophy, says Plato, is a 6Wpov. . . rs rT-v MovaWv xTrpos MvqYoao-vqs.63 Here we see definitely Plato's

of memory's roots in Plato's philosophy.

awareness of the roots of his use of memory in the epic oral tradition where Mnemosyne is the mother of the Muses. ?IXos,64recognizes the relation of memory Plato, 6 Mvmloaovvf in philosophy to the goddess of oral poetry, and is aware of the single nature of their source. In the midst of the written tradition of the fourth century,65 Plato resurrects the impor62

Symposium

208a.

63 Theaetetus 191d.

Athenaeus 5.216b. advocate of the oral tradition and the superiority of the spoken word over the written word is to be found in Alcidamas who in his IepI riTv rois Xoyous ypao6bvrwv sets forth the advantages of extempore speech. 'ypa7rTrovs
65 Another

64

volUtcIo ba Kal TriV aOtoBlv Triv -ypaTrriv' X6'ycv aXE?7r)v Kal K Kal rTv Xit6Olv aitrXpav ev roTs &a'yWot ylyve-OaL (18), and aXX' &c7rep el6wXa sStKaLov etvaL KaXElaOaa rovs ye-ypalu/evovs, ' oOi h'yoUiat XSyov6 A study of Plato's influence. Kcal niutl7ara Kal ocrXj,Iara X6ywv (27) reflect Alcidamas' statements TroV pxvri.fIv er7lrQov

Alcidamas' oration which is to be found in Antiphon, ed. F. Blass (Leipzig, Teubner, 1892), 193-205, shows the conscious attempt to reinvigorate the oral tradition in the fourth century in other fields besides philosophy.

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tance of the oral tradition and its emphasis on the spoken word and memory. Through the tale of Theuth and Thamus he reminds us of the long struggle of memory between remaining purely oral or becoming derivative and symbolic in its nature. He reflects this very same struggle in his own philosophy. In the struggle between the written and spoken word he sides with Thamus, and in doing so he is hearkening back to the oral tradition in which Mnemosyne was one of the oldest and most important of the deities. In reminding us of memory, as being the gift of Mnemosyne, he also reminds us that he is enthroning her once again as the mother of the
Muses, but this time as the mother of the
ovaULK, ELeyfarfTl

philosophy! III Out of this study of the important and unique survival of the oral tradition in a period when the written word had supplanted oral literature, several problems arise, the answers to which at best are hypothetical and admit of no proof. In view of the strongly rooted oral tradition of philosophy in the school of Pythagoras with its emphasis on the cultivation of memory and the transmission of the doctrines of the founder by word of mouth until as late as the fourth century, is there any connection between Socrates' oral method of teaching and his abstinence from committing to writing his teaching or thoughts? We know that Socrates throughout his entire life taught solely by means of the spoken word, and though he read the works of other philosophers, like Anaxagoras,66 he abstained from writing. Burnet and Taylor have shown the profound influence of Pythagoreanism and Orphism on Socrates' thought, how he was influenced by Pythagoreanism in his views on the nature of the soul, how he had among his students members of the Pythagorean school of philosophy who were with him even on his last day. In view of the influence of Pythagoreanism on almost every essential phase of his thought, can his refusal to commit anything to writing and his pre66 Phaedo 97c,

f.

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occupation entirely with the oral style be similarly considered a heritage or influence of Pythagoreanism? We know that all other schools of philosophy and philosophers committed their teaching to writing with the exception of the Pythagoreans and Socrates, who abstained from the written word because it was inferior to the spoken word. Their abstinence from writing and the emphasis on the spoken word in their teaching are too striking to be treated as a mere accident. Socrates impresses the judgment of his readers as a man who was likely to follow the consequences of his teachings; if he thought that books were lifeless and that the spoken word is nearer to the true expression of philosophy it is not improbable that he shared the Pythagorean point of view with regard to the oral transmission of thought. The exclusive feature of oral literature in both Pythagoreans and Socrates, and the absence of such in other contemporary philosophers, lead the student, who ventures into the realm of probabilities, in the absence of any positive proof to the contrary, to think that Socrates was likewise influenced by the Pythagorean view that oral style was the only proper expression of the philosophical soul. Another question that arises out of this same context is the problem of the authorship of the view of the Phaedrus on the question of the superiority of the spoken word and its intimate relation to memory. Is this the view of the historical Socrates or is it Plato's own view expressed in the person of Socrates in the dialogue? If we believe with Burnet and Taylor in ascribing to Socrates the essential points that he expresses in the dialogues where he is the central figure, we may consider the doctrine Socratic. The answer to this question, however, depends in part upon the first. If we believe that Socrates was following the Pythagorean oral tradition and its refusal to commit doctrines to writing, we certainly can regard the doctrine of the Phaedrus as Socratic.67
67 For references to the Socratic or Platonic origin of this belief, cf. Paul Shorey, What Plato Said (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1933), 556.

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Perhaps the most startling phase of the problem of oral literature in Plato is the influence of this oral tradition even in works of Plato, like the Letters, which, wherever they are genuine, express his own conviction and belief. Plato is in respect to the problem of the written vs. the oral word in philosophy one of the most surprising contradictions; but this need not surprise anyone who is aware of the existence of the many contradictions in Plato's work. Plato as the author of the dialogues is perhaps the most gifted child of written literature; he is the product of the written style and in the dialogues he is, if we stop to reflect, the very opposite of his master with respect to written expression of thought. Wishing to preserve the memory of his master he launched on the composition of the dialogues, like the oral poet in aim but unlike him in the means of expression. He used the written word to preserve the KX\OS of his master. He did not, however, if the above hypothesis is probable, escape the teaching of his master that philosophy is best expressed and its purpose most fulfilled by the practice of oral style. It is on this basis alone that a certain strain in Plato can be explained or understood. Plato never committed his esoteric teaching to writing, but it was communicated and preserved in the Academy orally. In this aspect we see a certain deliberate connection with his expression in the Letters. The eschewal of Plato from committing the esoteric doctrines of his thought, of which we have echoes in Aristotle, is to be associated with echoes of the Phaedrus doctrine in the letters of Plato himself. In the important Seventh Epistle of Plato we get certain intellectual, biographical revelations on the relation of philosophy to written expression: "One statement at any rate," he writes, "I can make in regard to all who have written or who may write with a claim to knowledge of the subjects to which I devote myself-no matter how they pretend to have acquired it, whether from my instruction or from others or by their own discovery. Such writers can in my opinion have no real acquaintance with the subject. I cer-

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tainly have composed no work in regard to it, nor shall I ever do so in future; for there is no way of putting it in words like other studies. Acquaintance with it must come rather after a long period of attendance on instruction in the subject itself and of close companionship, when, suddenly, like a blaze kindled by a leaping spark, it is generated in the soul and at If I thought it possible to once becomes self-sustaining. ... deal adequately with the subject in a treatise or a lecture for the general public, what finer achievement would there have been in my life than to write a work of great benefit to mankind and to bring the nature of things to light for all men?" 68 In these remarks of Plato we get the same conclusion as the Phaedrus, stated however without the philosophic explanation; it is the personal conviction of an artist who has reached the same conclusion as Pythagoras and Socrates after considerable years of apprenticeship to literary craft. This sentiment can best be understood as a chapter in the history of oral literature surviving as the best medium of expression in philosophy. It is the realization of Plato that the doctrine expressed in the Phaedrus is a sincere conviction of his own as well, and in this light it is possible, though it cannot be proven, that Plato's refusal to communicate his real philosophy to writing is the result of a conviction which Pythagoras and Plato and in fact many great teachers in the history of thought have shared: the living word is the most satisfactory language of the soul in its search of the highest, and attending this conviction is the importance of memory which is the natural 'receptacle' of the living word. And such a memory as we have seen is not merely retentive but is a creative medium through which the soul enters into communication with the divine nature of the soul and the ideas which require memory for any proper apprehension of them.
68 Epistle vII.341c-e of L. Post, Thirteen Epistles of Plato (translation [Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1935]); cf. 344c and Epistle I.314c; cf. also the anecdote (cited by Thompson, op. cit. [see note 35], p. 136) of a disciple of Plato 7ravra ra Xe}y6j,eva wap' avro- &7roypaqa/Aevos &t7rErXvev,re, related by Hermeias:
rbTv Kai vavaayiq repLneaocvv ravra sl66a-KaXov, &7rdcXeoe, Kai iO7reoarrpeoe Sp 6rt oub et ev fL(3fXLOLs &arotOeaOcaL rTa vorljara, aXX' ev T7 LvxV. peLopaOels pyw

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The fortleben of Mnemosyne in the oral context of philosophy in the fifth and fourth centuries, at the very threshold of the vigorous written tradition, is such as to cause us to wonder at its vitality. It is only in this context that certain phases of our evidence about Pythagoreans, Socrates and Plato can be understood. The relation of the Homeric oral literature to the oral tradition and the importance of memory in philosophy is real and illuminating, and it is only by the 'association of the two that we can understand the origins and the nature of the spoken word in oral composition whether it be in poetry or philosophy. For men like Socrates and Plato are not to be understood in vacuo but only as we realize the roots of their thought which extend to times and practices of which written literature preserves only echoes. An inevitable consequence of this is the warning lest we in our modern criticism, we, the children of the written word, should apply to the criticism of literature which is oral in character the concepts or the qualities that we associate with written literature. In his studies of epic oral literature Parry has shown the error of such a method which leads to obscurity of the nature of epic oral creation. In philosophy likewise we must approach Platonic criticism with standards that are consonant with the nature and background of oral style in philosophy. Such an approach to Platonic criticism will show that we may be called upon to revise certain conceptions or the basis of certain probabilities. One of these is the problem of the relation of memory and the 'historicity' of Socrates in Plato's pages. The problem of the 'historicity' has been abstracted from the part that memory may have played in it. In the case of oral poetry scholars and the spade have shown the trustworthy basis of folk-memory in Greek legends. Myres maintains that folkmemory is so intimate and detailed it must not be mistaken for poetic invention; "the Iliad and Odyssey," he says, "whatever their date in the form in which we have them now, rest on a coherent and trustworthy foundation of folk-memory,

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and give vivid and copious illustrations of a historical Achaean world." 69 This aspect of memory is the retentive rather than the creative aspect of it in oral composition. It will be observed that this retentive character of folk-memory is likewise applicable to dramatic creation in the great age of Attic drama. The material of tragedy was not invention but data of folk-memory, for however the tragedians treated the themes they did not invent them in our sense of the word. The tragedians like the oral poets are true to folk-memory. When we come, however, to Plato, memory is omitted as a factor in the trustworthy basis of his characters and their utterances. Plato repeats again and again that a philosopher must have a good memory,70 retentive as well as creative. The Pythagoreans trained their memory religiously in order to preserve with accuracy their master's teachings. Socrates in turn exhibits no wild inventive turn of mind in so far as the Pythagorean doctrines are concerned; he penetrates to their meaning and adapts them to his purpose but he does not invent them. When we come to Plato, however, who was in the tradition of the spoken word and its association with memory, who says that the philosopher must be endowed with a good memory, who heard his master, why need we transport to the problem of the historicity of Socrates or the dialogues, the fanciful, imaginative, and tradition-abstracting tendencies of modern written literature? 71 In a society such as fifth-century Athens, which was separated only by several centuries from the oral tradition, such tales as those of Theuth and Thamus are echoes of an oral era, like the legends of folk-memory whose kernel of truth Myres so significantly points out in his book on Who Were the Greeks? Similarly, Plato's portraits of the contemporaries of Socrates are so trustworthy that, as Burnet points out, we have in Plato an essentially true picture of the intellectual background of fifth69Myres, op. cit. (see note 17), 313. 70Republic 486d, 494b, 535c.
71 Cf. M. J. Austin, "Plato as a writer of imaginary conversations," Cl. Jour. xvII (1922), 243-55.

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century Athens; anachronisms are insignificant in this picture which he drew with fidelity. Imaginative falsification is the product of written literature rather than of the oral nature of the interrelation of minds in the Socratic circle. When Plato wrote about Socrates, the oral tradition of memory was so vital, fresh and retentive, in contrast to our modern memory, that it was not a great feat of memory to remember exactly the content of a conversation in the Socratic circle. The oral mind is capable of memorizing with ease what seems incredible to us, and to remember the exact and specific ideas of a speaker was not unusual. In Plato we have several instances which justify our confidence in the essential trustworthiness of reported conversations. It is not without significance that Socrates is shown in the Menexenus 72 as endowed with such a power of memory that he can repeat an oration which he had heard Aspasia make. In the Timaeus we have another instance of this power of retaining in memory the substance of a conversation. Critias says: "I listened at the time with childlike interest to the old man's narrative; he was very ready to teach me, and I asked him again and again to repeat his words, so that like an indelible picture they were branded into my mind. As soon as the day broke, I rehearsed them as he spoke them to my companions, that they, as well as myself, might have something to say. And now, Socrates, to make an end of my preface, I am ready to tell you the whole." 73 In this we can see the pains Critias takes so as to report the conversation accurately. Plato is too great an artist to be endowing his dramatis personae with powers which they do not possess. If in the fourth century Niceratus could repeat from memory the entire Iliad and Odyssey,74 the remembrance of the conversation between Socrates and Parmenides does not seem "an impossible tour
72Menexenus 236 b-c; cf. Hippias' remark that he could memorize fifty names on hearing them only once, Hippias Major 285e. 73 Timaeus 26b-c (B. Jowett transl.); cf. Phaedrus 228a.
74Xenophon Symposium
iII.5,

6.

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de force of memory." 75 In these instances Plato has shown that the power of remembering conversations is not unusual but is an illustration in the concrete of his statement "the forgetful soul we must not list in the roll of competent lovers of wisdom but we require a good memory". 76 Accuracy in reporting conversations is thus integrally bound with the oral practice of philosophy. We have an actual analogy in the case of Thucydides who says that he has endeavored in his speeches to give the general purport of what was actually said; 77 though the style with which Thucydides clothes all the speeches may lead us to doubt his remark, as I have tried to show elsewhere,78 it is the ideas which characterize the speakers that make for trustworthiness and fidelity to what was spoken on each occasion. Thus, although the style in Archidamus' speech is the same as the style of Pericles' speech, the individual characterizations of ideas are different. It is on the ideas of individual characterization that both Plato and Thucydides base the fidelity of their portraits and not on style. As Taylor has shown in the case of the Socrates of Plato and that of Aeschines of Sphettus,79 it is the style that is different, but the individual characterization of Socrates is the same. The retentiveness of the masters' ideas, expressed by the living word, is therefore not an extraordinary thing for Plato, who, as we have seen, was the child both of the oral and written word. His memory of the ideas of a discussion even when he was not present is not extraordinary. For example, if Simmias and Cebes were present on the last day and heard the discussion of the master
76

Shorey, op. cit. (see note 67), 287.

76Republic 486d (in Loeb Cl. Lib.).

Notopoulos, "Plato, Theaetetus 153, and Thucydides 6.18.6," The Classical Weekly xxvII (1933), 60-61. For Thucydides' attribution to his speakers of "ideas and arguments familiar at the time when he represents them as speaking ", cf. J. H. Finley, Jr., "Euripides and Thucydides," Harvard
Studies in Classical Philology XLIX (1938), 22-68.

77 i.22. 78 J. A.

79A. E. Taylor, "Aeschines of Sphettus," in Philosophical Studies (London, Macmillan, 1934), 1-27.

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on immortality, their Pythagorean oral retentiveness was likely to have imparted to Plato, who was absent,80 a fairly accurate report of the conversation. For though an oral poet in epic tradition retains the content through meter, in prose memory of the oral word preserves the ideas rather than the words, as the speeches of Thucydides and the dialogues of Plato show. And to an audience that received its enjoyment of Greek tragedy orally, memory was, as Parry and Jousse have shown, a thing of sound rather than of print. To falsify tradition, or abstract from a trustworthy context the ideas of a speaker, is for Plato a practice that is not consonant with the oral basis of literature or philosophy. His veneration for the master is not likely to turn false where it concerns the living word of his master; for to remember the oral context of philosophy is to remember truthfully, as the Pythagorean rigid training of memory reveals. A re-examination of Plato, with the added insight of the importance of memory and oral tradition in philosophy, is essential if we are to get a clear view of the problems of Platonic criticism. We will then have a sounder basis for the judgment of such verdicts as: "there is no likelihood that just such a speech as the Apology was ever delivered to an Athenian jury." 81 No solutions of the Platonic problems can
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of the form and function of the oral style in philosophy is therefore one of the ways to establish the character of Platonic thought. Knowledge of that oral style reveals the originality and naturalness of Platonic dialectic. By understanding that its roots lie in the name and nature of Mnemosyne we will, like the consultors of the oracle of Trophonius, drink of the fountain of Lethe to forget our errors of criticism, and drink of the fountain of Mnemosyne to remember what is revealed to us by the oracle of Plato.
81 P.

80Phaedo 59b. Shorey, op. cit. (see note 67), 81.