Simonides of Ceos
556–468 BC
Lyric·Graecia
Invented the method of loci — the memory palace — after he was the sole survivor of a banquet hall collapse and identified the dead by recalling where each guest had been seated. He was the first Greek poet to charge a fee for verse, which scandalized those who believed song should be a gift. He wrote the epitaph for the three hundred at Thermopylae: go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
Key Ideas
01
The method of loci — memory as spatial architecture
02
Painting is silent poetry, poetry is speaking painting
03
The poet as honest professional, not court ornament
04
Memory as the obligation the living owe the dead