but it was her ugliness that made her beautiful. Her nose was, there is no denying it, crooked. Her eyes were too far apart and her mouth too big. But she unified it all, imbued the imperfect with her peace. How does the perfect come from imperfection?
‘I must borrow the boys, Rufustinus. But they will be back.’ That was typical of her. Absolutely in command, but polite, regal. She turned to us; our desks were now side by side. ‘Publius, Laelius. The war is over. Your fathers are home. Go to the Campus Martius to greet them. Festo will take you. But first go and change. I want you both in the toga praetexta.’ That was formal dress for boys of Laelius’ station and above, a light-coloured toga whose purple border meant we were freeborn. My mother smiled, warmly yet almost imperceptibly, and left the room.
‘But mine’s at home,’ Laelius whispered in my ear.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll lend you one of mine.’
I felt many things, all at once. A child does not yet know how to marshal them; nor do many men. My father’s return was exciting. But the Campus Martius was, I have to admit, a stronger draw, and abandoning Aeschylus a third. I have grown to love his plays. But does anyone understand them?
Yes, Aristotle, that unparalleled, polymath Greek. Alexander the Great was fortunate to have him as a tutor. He understood everything. Aeschylus and, from what I read last night, memory. I found his treatise on the subject, De memoria et reminiscentia. Scipio’s is a fine library.
I shall let myself digress again from my past to the present. I have, after all, as good an excuse as a man can have – Aristotle. ‘It is impossible even to think,’ he writes, ‘without a mental picture.’ Memory, he goes on to say, belongs to the same part of the soul as imagination. It is a collection of pictures in the mind that comes to us from the impressions of our senses.
These mental pictures Aristotle likens to a painted portrait, ‘the lasting state of which we describe as memory’. He thinks of the forming of a mental image as a movement, like a signet ring making a seal on wax. ‘Some men have no memory owing to disease or age, just as if a seal were impressed on flowing water. The imprint makes no impression because it is worn down like old walls in buildings, or because of the hardness of that which is to receive the impression.’
This is exciting. I am almost seventy years old and yet have never before thought of these things. Here I am remembering with Scipio, without until now asking how it is that we can or do remember.
‘Follow me closely, please,’ Festo said. ‘The crowds will be thick, and we mustn’t get separated.’ He was always earnest, Festo. And he looked so odd, thin and stringy like a bean, with dull, lank hair that lay across his forehead like a tent flap, a pinched head and pock-marked skin. But if a worrier, he was a kind and faithful servant.
‘Now, if we do lose each other, let’s meet at your Uncle Cratinus’ house, young master Publius. Ask anyone, but listen, both of you. You go through the Forum, past the temple of Castor and Pollux, turn left, go straight up the street, past the temple of Diana, then turn right, then second left. Before you come to the city gate just by the pond there’s a small flour mill. The drive up to your uncle’s house is just beside it …’
‘Do you honestly think he expected us to remember all that?’ Laelius asked me as soon as we’d set off, Festo well in front.
‘I thought you would. You could make a picture,’ I replied. In the end, far from being separated, the crowds pushed us so close together we couldn’t part. It wasn’t bad at the beginning, as we walked down the Palatine and along the path through the waste ground at its foot.
As we followed it, Laelius asked me, ‘Why does no one build on this ground? In other parts of Rome, you’d find a thousand people living on a space like this.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘Know what?’
‘Why this ground is empty?’
‘No, I don’t. Tell me.’
‘About a hundred years ago, a general called Vitruvius Vaccus had a huge house here, and a big garden. But he committed treason. He was fighting some northern tribe and was surrounded. He surrendered, on condition that his life be spared.’
‘Which it was?’
‘Which it was. But his men were massacred. When he got back to Rome, the senate had his house here demolished, and decreed that the site should stand empty for ever in memory of his shame. But––’
‘Come on, you two!’ Festo chided from ahead. ‘Keep up, or we’ll be late.’
What I read in Aristotle itself triggered a memory. I hunted for perhaps an hour, until I found it, a passage in Plato’s dialogue the Theaetetus in which Socrates assumes that there is a block of wax in our souls – the quality varies – and this is the ‘gift of Memory, the mother of the Muses’. Whenever we hear or see or think of anything, we hold this wax under the perceptions and thoughts and imprint them on it, ‘just as we make impressions with rings’.
I have been thinking how best to do this. It seems to me that using this villa – or any largish house – is one good way. Say I want to remember the names of the planets. Yes, I could memorise a written list – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. But how much easier simply to place the five planets in five different rooms of this villa. So I stand, in my mind, at the front door. I walk in. I place Mercury in the portico. On the table in the tablinum I place Venus, and so on. When I want to remember the names, I simply walk round the house in my head.
I wonder if this would work with a much longer list? The towns of Italy, for example? I suppose I could use up the outhouses, and the stables. I would just have to formulate a very obvious route for my mental walk. I must try.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
