TechCrunch comment: Scepsis is killing people almost as much as cancer, globally.
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Location of the later Scepsis (just > above center) The later Scepsis was about sixty stadia (7.5 miles) lower > down Mount Ida from Palae-Scepsis. Its acropolis occupied the hill north of > the modern village of Kurşuntepe. This later town of Scepsis is memorable > for the discovery there, during the time of Sulla, of the works of Aristotle > and Theophrastus, which had been buried by the illiterate relations of one > Neleus (a pupil of Aristotle and friend of Theophrastus), so that they would > not be carried off by Attalus I, who was then founding the Library of > Pergamum. Several times in its history, the citizens of Scepsis were forced > to move elsewhere.
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View of the village of Kurşuntepe from the site of ancient Scepsis.
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Erastus of Scepsis (; ) and his brother Coriscus were students of Plato. He was also a friend of Aristotle. Scepsis is located about fifty kilometers from Assos in Asia Minor, to which Aristotle and Xenocrates traveled after Plato's death.
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Scepsis or Skepsis () was an ancient settlement in the Troad, Asia Minor that is at the present site of the village of Kurşunlutepe, near the town of Bayramiç in Turkey. The settlement is notable for being the location where the famous library of Aristotle was kept before being moved to Pergamum and Alexandria. It was also home to Metrodorus of Scepsis and Demetrius of Scepsis.
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When citizens of surrounding cities were forced to > migrate to Troy, citizens of Scepsis were also forced to relocate. The city > was again evacuated while the residents of surrounding cities were made to > move to Alexandria Troas. Certain traditions hold that Saint Cornelius the > Centurion, the first Pagan convert to Christianity, became the first bishop > of Scepsis in the early days of Christianity. Scepsis remains a titular see > in the Roman Catholic Church.
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Coriscus of Scepsis (; ) and his brother Erastus were students of Plato. He was also a friend of Aristotle. Coriscus' son Neleus is mentioned as inheriting Aristotle's library. Scepsis is located about fifty kilometers from Assos in Asia Minor, to which Aristotle and Xenocrates traveled after Plato's death.
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Neleus of Scepsis (; ), was the son of Coriscus of Scepsis. He was a disciple of Aristotle and Theophrastus, the latter of whom bequeathed to him his library, and appointed him one of his executors. Neleus supposedly took the writings of Aristotle and Theophrastus from Athens to Scepsis, where his heirs let them languish in a cellar until the 1st century BC, when Apellicon of Teos discovered and purchased the manuscripts, bringing them back to Athens.Strabo, xiii.
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Palea-Scepsis (Old Scepsis) is notable for the native tradition that it was once the "capital of Aeneas's dominions." It was situated near the source of the Aesepus, high up on Mount Ida. William Vaux was able to note in 1877 that a village in the neighborhood still bore the name of Eski Skisepje, which in Turkish corresponds to "Palea-Scepsis." Dr. Andreas David Mordtmann, the discoverer of the settlement, is quoted on his discovery by Dr. Archibald Ross Colquhoun in a reference by Vaux.
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Scepsis is a genus of horseflies of the family Tabanidae. It was defined by Walker in 1850, with S. nivalis as the type species.
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Metrodorus of Scepsis () (c. 145 BCE - 70 BCE), from the town of Scepsis in ancient Mysia, was a friend of Mithridates VI of Pontus and celebrated in antiquity for the excellence of his memory. He may be the same Metrodorus who, according to the Elder Pliny, in consequence of his hostility to the Romans, was surnamed the "Rome-hater" ("Misoromæus"). Information on Metrodorus is very scarce.
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The local antiquarian writer Demetrius of Scepsis (ca. 205-130 BCE) relates that Gargara received an influx of settlers who were forcibly moved from their home in Mysia, Miletoupolis, by 'the kings' (presumably those of Bithynia) in the late 3rd or early 2nd century BCE. Miletoupolis was a semi-Greek settlement, and so Demetrius relates that as a result of this influx of immigrants there are hardly any Aeolians left in Gargara.Demetrius of Scepsis in Strabo 13.1.
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Demetrius of Scepsis fr. 27 Gaede = Strabo 13.1.39. It is to around this time that the latest ceramic finds from Achilleion date, suggesting that the site became uninhabited soon afterwards.Cook (1973) 185.
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Certain traditions hold Cornelius as becoming either the first bishop of Caesarea, or the bishop of Scepsis in Mysia.Bechtel, Florentine. "Cornelius." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 4. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908.
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Demetrius of Scepsis fr. 33 Gaede ap. Strabo 13.51.1. Finally, in the reign of Augustus the Greek mythographer Conon provided two alternative explanations for the origins of Antandrus.Konon FGrHist 26 F 1.41 ap.
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309-310, Madrid: Gredos (1979), Also, Demetrius of Scepsis placed it in Arcadia. Strabo makes mention of all these possibilities. The site of Oechalia is at or near that of ancient Carnasium (Karnasion).
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Between 2002–2012 Tarasov actively participated (behind the scene) in publication of the Scepsis journal (Russian: Скепсис), also contributing to its online version (from May 2003). He was responsible for some of the publications on the journal's website, collaborated with authors and translators as an editor and a curator. He had a noticeable influence on the political and theoretical stance of the journal, which is evident in the journal's and the website's mission statement, documenting some of Tarasov’s theoretical ideas, such as: defining the bureaucrat-bourgeoisie as the ruling class of modern Russia; characterization of Russia as a society of degrading peripheral capitalism; distinguishing between the concepts of "intellectuals" and "intelligentsia"; recognition of the rudimentary level of the left movement in Russia, etc. In addition, the mission statement of Scepsis contains references to five of Tarasov's writings.(Russian) Платформа «Скепсиса» (Platform of the Scepsis journal).
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Demetrius of Scepsis (c. 205 - c. 130 BC) gives a different version again in which Antandrus was originally inhabited by Cilicians from the plain of Thebe facing the Gulf of Adramyttium (not to be confused with Cilicia in south-east Turkey).
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Alazia () was a city of ancient Troad near the River Odrysses, which flows out of Lake Dascylitis from the west through the plain of Mygdonia and empties into the Rhyndacus.Hecataeus of Miletus, quoted in Demetrius of Scepsis calls the town Alazonia (Ἀλαζονία) and places it along with Argyria on the right bank of the Aesepus River near Scepsis. The tribe associated with the town was called Alazones based on the writings of Hekataios, Menekrates, and Palaiphatos. This tribe, which was also mentioned by Homer in the Iliad, persisted after the city of Alazia was abandoned, living in villages along the Odrysses.
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Nothing is said of the Trojan language; the Carians are specifically said to be barbarian-speaking, possibly because their language was distinct from the contemporaneous lingua franca of western Anatolia.The lingua franca would have been Luwian, though the poet has no name for it. Alternatively, Carian may earn this epithet as the most familiar foreign ("barbarian") language to a Greek of the eastern Aegean when the Iliad was composed . The classical Greek historian Demetrius of Scepsis, native of Scepsis in the hills above Troy, wrote a vast study of the "Trojan Battle Order" under that title (Greek Trōikos diakosmos).
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Hestiaea of Alexandria, also Hestiaea, was a scholar who wrote a treatise on Homer's Iliad that discussed the question whether the Trojan War was fought near the city then called Ilium, and which was cited by Demetrius of Scepsis. None of her work is extant.
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Miletus or Miletos () was a town of ancient Mysia, in the territory of Scepsis, on the river Evenus, which was destroyed as early as the time of Pliny the Elder. The site of Miletus is tentatively located a near Uyuncak Köprü, over Havran Çay, in Anatolia.
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The first mention of Achilleion is as a fortified settlement from which Mytilene conducted its attacks on Athenian controlled Sigeion to the north in the early 6th century BCE.Herodotus 5.94.2 (mid-5th century BC), Strabo 13.1.39, who quotes Timaeus FGrHist 566 F 129 (late 4th century BC) and Demetrius of Scepsis fr. 27 Gaede (mid-2nd century BC).
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In the 7th century BCE, the Aeolians also expanded into the Troad, founding the cities of Gargara Assos, Antandros, Cebre, Scepsis, Neandreia and Pitya. The Achaeans of the Peloponnese who followed the Aeolic speakers participated in the Aeolic resettlement. The received tradition records Orestes as an instigator of the relocation of the Aeolians, and the royal family of the Penthilides on Mytilene claimed descent from Orestes.
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Argyria () was a town located in the ancient Troad on the right bank of the Aesepus River (modern Gönen Çay) near Scepsis. It was noted for its silver mines, whence the town's name (άργυρος is Greek for 'silver'). Strabo further clarifies its location as at the foot of Mount Ida near the source of the Aesepus. Its site is located near Karaidin Maden (Gümüş Maden) in Asiatic Turkey.
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309-310, Madrid: Gredos (1979), Also, Demetrius of Scepsis placed it in Arcadia., and Homer also calls the Oechalia in Messenia the city of Eurytus in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, and this identification was followed by Pherecydes of Athens and Pausanias. Strabo makes mention of all these possibilities but does not offer any additional data on the concrete location of the Oechalia of Thessaly. The site's location is unknown.
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The second tradition originates with Demetrius of Scepsis, a grammarian who wrote on Homer and whose hometown was less than 18 km from the site of Marpessos.Pausanias 10.12.2-7, Stephanus of Byzantium s.v. Μερμησσός. His account is primarily preserved in the work of the 2nd century CE geographer Pausanias, and it is difficult to tell to what extent the well-traveled Pausanias (a native of Lydia) supplemented Demetrios' account with his own personal experience.
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Walter Ong considered this dispute one of the major controversies over Ramism. Frances Yates argued that it should be considered as "over-lapping" with the debate of Bruno with the Aristotelians at Oxford, also in 1584. Perkins represented the Puritan view of mnemonic techniques based on images, which considered them tainted with idolatry, heresy, Catholicism and obscenity. With Bruno and Dicsone, Perkins mentioned in his dedicatory epistle Metrodorus of Scepsis and Cosma Rosselli.
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In: Studies in Egyptology Presented to Miriam Lichtheim, vol. 1. page 257–263. The narrations of Diodorus, for example, are credited with more trust than those of Herodotus, because Diodorus obviously collected the tales with much more scepsis. The fact that Diodorus credits the Giza pyramid to Greek kings, might be reasoned in legends of his lifetimes and that the pyramids were demonstrably reused in late periods by Greek and Roman kings and noblemen.
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Some coins describe the Armenian kings as "Philhellenes" ("lovers of Greek culture"). Knowledge of Greek in Armenia is also evidenced by surviving parchments and rock inscriptions. Cleopatra, the wife of Tigranes the Great, invited Greeks such as the rhetor Amphicrates and the historian Metrodorus of Scepsis to the Armenian court, and - according to Plutarch - when the Roman general Lucullus seized the Armenian capital Tigranocerta, he found a troupe of Greek actors who had arrived to perform plays for Tigranes.Grousset pp.
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Strabo also tells us that for "some" Homer's "couch of Typhon" (and hence the Arimoi) was located "in a wooded place, in the fertile land of Hyde", with Hyde being another name for Sardis (or its acropolis), and that Demetrius of Scepsis thought that the Arimoi were most plausibly located "in the Catacecaumene country in Mysia".Strabo, 13.4.6. For Hyde see also Homer, Iliad 20.386. The third-century BC poet Lycophron, placed Echidna's lair in this region.Lycophron, Alexandra 1351 ff. (pp.
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He was the author of The Vanity of Dogmatizing (editions from 1661), which attacked scholasticism and religious persecution. It was a plea for religious toleration, the scientific method, and freedom of thought. It also contained a tale that became the material for Matthew Arnold's Victorian poem The Scholar Gipsy. Glanvill was at first a Cartesian, but shifted his ground a little, engaging with scepticism and proposing a modification in Scepsis Scientifica (1665), a revision and expansion of The Vanity of Dogmatizing.
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The book received a mixed reaction. Yuri Semenov supported the point regarding "Solzhenitsyn's continuous degradation" as a writer, but also criticized Voinovich for simultaneously "glorifying himself and his books".Yuri Semenov. Ideological Fashion in Science and Skepticism article from Scepsis №2, Winter 2003 (in Russian) Liza Novikova of Kommersant compared the book to performance art, suggesting that "the author only helps creating the very same myth by trying to prove that Solzhenitsyn doesn't match the rank of a great writer".
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Homer, equivocally, and Apollodorus of Athens and Aristarchus of Samothrace placed it in Thessaly.Fragmentos de épica griega arcaica, pp. 309-310, Madrid: Gredos (1979), Also, Demetrius of Scepsis placed it in Arcadia, and Homer also calls the Oechalia in Messenia the city of Eurytus in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, and this identification was followed by Pherecydes of Athens and Pausanias. Strabo makes mention of all these possibilities but does not offer any additional data on the concrete location of the Oechalia of Thessaly.
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He may have had access to Roman sources and traditions on which he foisted Greek interpretations and interpolations.Arnoldo Momigliano, The classical foundations of modern historiography, University Presses of California, Columbia and Princeton, 1990, p101; : see also Dillery, in Andrew Feldherr (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians, Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp78-81. Little else is known of Diocles. He appears to have been a figure of note, well travelled, and abstemious; Athenaeus cites Demetrius of Scepsis to attest that Diocles "drank cold water to the day of his death".
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Northern end of the Canal of Xerxes, now filled up. Funeral mound at the southern end of the Canal of Xerxes Location of the northern entrance of the canal (cove to the left). The veracity of Herodotus' claims was doubted already in ancient times, but land surveys and geophysical investigations of the peninsula have confirmed the existence of the canal. In the second century BCE, Demetrius of Scepsis stated based on first hand information that there indeed had been a canal there, but he could not trace all of it.
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Several sources whose information derives from the 4th century BCE philosopher Heraclides Ponticus (see below) refer to Marpessos as a village (Latin vicus, Ancient Greek κώμη) in the territory of Gergis. Demetrius of Scepsis (as preserved by Pausanias: see below) refers to it as a former polis which in his day (the mid-2nd century BCE) was reduced to a population of 60 inhabitants.Pausanias 10.12.4. It is unlikely that Marpessos was ever an independent polis, and so here the word is probably being used in the sense of 'town, urban settlement'.Mitchell (2004) 1001.
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During the reign of Tigranes the Great (95–55 BC), the kingdom of Armenia reached its greatest extent, containing many Greek cities, including the entire Syrian tetrapolis. Cleopatra, the wife of Tigranes the Great, invited Greeks such as the rhetor Amphicrates and the historian Metrodorus of Scepsis to the Armenian court, and—according to Plutarch—when the Roman general Lucullus seized the Armenian capital, Tigranocerta, he found a troupe of Greek actors who had arrived to perform plays for Tigranes.Grousset pp.90-91 Tigranes' successor Artavasdes II even composed Greek tragedies himself.
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Fragmentos de épica griega arcaica, pp. 309-310, Madrid: Gredos (1979), Also, Demetrius of Scepsis placed it in Arcadia, and Homer also calls the Oechalia in Messenia the city of Eurytus in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, and this identification was followed by Pherecydes of Athens and Pausanias. Strabo makes mention of all these possibilities but does not offer any additional data on the concrete location of the Oechalia of Thessaly. The site of Oechalia is tentatively placed at the kastro of Ano Potamia (Άνω Ποταμιά) in the municipal unit of Kyme.
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Instead, he had kept him at the farthest > remove possible, in disgrace and contumely, and had suffered him to be held > a sort of prisoner in marshy and sickly regions. Now, however, he summoned > him to his palace with marks of esteem and friendship. There, in secret > conference, they strove to allay their mutual suspicions at the expense of > their friends, by laying the blame upon them. One of these was Metrodorus of > Scepsis, a man of agreeable speech and wide learning, who enjoyed the > friendship of Mithridates in such a high degree that he was called the > king's father.
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"The style of these works, as of the botanical books, suggests that, as in the case of Aristotle, what we possess consists of notes for lectures or notes taken of lectures," his translator Arthur F. Hort remarks. "There is no literary charm; the sentences are mostly compressed and highly elliptical, to the point sometimes of obscurity". The text of these fragments and extracts is often so corrupt that there is a certain plausibility to the well-known story that the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus were allowed to languish in the cellar of Neleus of Scepsis and his descendants.
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But he also states that some others, among them Metrodorus of Scepsis and Hypsicrates, say that after Themiscyra, the Amazons traveled and lived on the borders of the Gargarians, in the northerly foothills of those parts of the Caucasian Mountains which are called Ceraunian.STRABO, GEOGRAPHY, Book XI, Chapter 5 . Aeschylus, in Prometheus Bound, places the original home of the Amazons in the country about Lake Maeotis and they later moved to Themiscyra on the Thermodon. Homer had placed the Amazons much closer to the Greek world of his times, saying that the Amazons were sought and found somewhere near Lycia.
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The author of the epic poem Capture of Oechalia (usually attributed to Creophylus of Samos), Sophocles (in The Trachiniae) and Hecataeus of Miletus (who locates Oechalia near Eretria) were aligned among with those who identified this Oechalia with the Euboean location. Homer, equivocally, and Apollodorus of Athens and Aristarchus of Samothrace placed it in Thessaly.Fragmentos de épica griega arcaica, pp. 309-310, Madrid: Gredos (1979), Also, Demetrius of Scepsis placed it in Arcadia, and Homer also calls the Oechalia in Messenia the city of Eurytus in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, and this identification was followed by Pherecydes of Athens and Pausanias.
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Apellicon's chief pursuit was the collection of rare and important books. He purchased from the family of Neleus of Scepsis in the Troad manuscripts of the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus (including their libraries), which had been given to Neleus by Theophrastus himself, whose pupil Neleus had been. They had been concealed in a cellar to prevent their falling into the hands of the book-collecting princes of Pergamon, and were in a very dilapidated condition. Apellicon was a lover of books rather than a philosopher; trying to restore the damaged copies he made new ones, filling up the lacunae incorrectly, and published them full of mistakes.
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Strabo reports that, according to the Greek grammarian Demetrius of Scepsis, Amyntor's father Ormenus was the eponymous founder of the city of Ormenium (which Strabo identifies with a village called Orminium which he located at the foot of Mount Pelion, near the Pegasitic Gulf). According to this account Ormenus was the son of Cercaphus, the son of Aeolus, and Ormenus had two sons Amnytor and Euaemon, and that Amyntor had a son Phoenix, and Eumaemon had a son Eurypylus who succeeded to the throne, because Phoenix had fled to Peleus in Phthia.Strabo, 9.5.18. Scholia name Phoenix's mother either Cleobule or Hippodameia, and the concubine as either Clytia or Phthia.
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Strabo, giving credits to Metrodorus of Scepsis and Hypsicrates, mentions that at his time the Amazons were believed to live on the borders of the Gargareans. There were two special months in the spring in which they would go up into the neighboring mountain which separates them and the Gargareans. The Gargareans also, in accordance with an ancient custom, would go there to offer sacrifice with the Amazons and also to have intercourse with them for the sake of begetting children. They did this in secrecy and darkness, any Gargareans at random with any Amazon, and after making them pregnant they would send them away.
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Aelian, Fr. 47. Demetrius of Scepsis knows that the maidens were sent for the first time "when the Persians were already in control", so after 547 BC. Locrian maidens had the appearance of a Greek mourner, as they went to Ilion barefoot, wearing only one garment and their hair was loose or cut. Cut hair symbolizes maturity for both sexes and plays a part in marriage rituals, while loosened or cut hair are required in other cults such as to Demeter and Dionysus, and bare feet in other as well. In addition to these, loosened hair and bare feet are signs of a witch.
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A number of fragments attributed to a man by this name are to be found in classical works. The following fragments most likely refer to the Metrodorus of Scepsis who was in the service of Mithridates Eupator and who was famous for his memory, however, the possibility exists that there was more than one man identified by this name. > The Amazons, also, are said to live in the mountains above Albania. Now > Theophanes, who made the expedition with Pompey and was in the country of > the Albanians, says that the Gelae and the Legae, Scythian people, live > between the Amazons and the Albanians, and that the Mermadalis River flows > there, midway between these people and the Amazons.
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One of the classical accounts about the existence of an Armenian alphabet before Mesrop Mashtots, comes from Philo of Alexandria (20 BCE – 50 CE), who in his writings notes that the work of the Greek philosopher and historian Metrodorus of Scepsis (ca. 145 BCE – 70 BCE), On Animals, was translated into Armenian. Metrodorus was a close friend and a court historian of the Armenian emperor Tigranes the Great and also wrote his biography. A third century Roman theologian, Hippolytus of Rome (170–235 CE), in his Chronicle, while writing about his contemporary, Emperor Severus Alexander (reigned 208–235 CE), mentions that the Armenians are amongst those nations who have their own distinct alphabet.
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Hestiaea is variously believed to have lived in the ancient Greek city Alexandria Troas, on the Aegean Sea in modern Turkey, or in Alexandria in Egypt. Hestiaea correctly realised that the plain lying between Ilium and the Mediterranean Sea was a comparatively recent deposit, and therefore questioned the Homeric view that this plain was the site of the Trojan War. Her opinion influenced Demetrius of Scepsis, who cited her as a source. According to the Homer scholar J. V. Luce, writing in Celebrating Homer's Landscapes: Troy and Ithaca Revisited, neither Hestiaea nor Demetrius would have accepted the view espoused by the inhabitants of Ilium that their city marked the location of ancient Troy.
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The Sixth Letter is addressed to Hermias, tyrant of Atarneus, and to Erastus and Coriscus, two pupils of Plato residing in Scepsis (a town near Atarneus), advising them to become friends. The letter claims that Plato never met Hermias, contrary to the account given of the latter's life by Strabo; contains a number of parallels to the Second Letter concerning the value of combining wisdom with power, the utility of referring disputes to its author, and the importance of reading and re-reading it; and concludes that all three addresses should publicly swear an oath to strange deities, and to do so half-jestingly. For these reasons, Bury concludes that Sixth Letter is inauthentic and shares its author with the Second Letter.
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Five unmarried youths () were chosen by lot from each [tribe] for four years, to superintend the proceedings, the officiating priest being called ("leader"). A man decked with garlands (possibly the priest himself) started running, pursued by a band of young men called ("running with bunches of grapes in their hands"); if he was caught, it was a guarantee of good fortune to the city; if not, the reverse. In the second part of the festival nine tents were set up in the country, in each of which nine citizens, representing the phratries (or obae), feasted together in honour of the god (for huts or booths extemporized as shelters; see W. Warde Fowler in Classical Review, March 1908, on the country festival in Tibullus ii. I). According to Demetrius of Scepsis (in Athenaeus iv.
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58: φησὶ δὲ Μυρσίλος Μηθυμναίων κτίσμα εἶναι τὴν Ἄσσον, Ἑλλάνικός τε καὶ Αἰολίδα φησίν, ὥστε καὶ τὰ Γάργαρα καὶ ἡ Λαμπωνία Αἰολέων <εἰσίν>. Ἀσσίων γάρ ἐστι κτίσμα τὰ Γάργαρα, οὐκ εὖ συνοικούμενα• ἐποίκους γὰρ οἱ βασιλεῖς εἰσήγαγον ἐκ Μιλητου πόλεως ἐρημώσαντες ἐκείνην, ὥστε ἡμιβαρβάρους γενέσθαι φησὶ Δημήτριος αὐτοὺς ὁ Σκήψιος ἀντὶ Αἰολέων ('Myrsilos says that Assos is a foundation of the Methymnaeans, and Hellanicus also says that it is Aeolian, so that Gargara and Lampanoia are also Aeolian. For Gargara is a foundation of the Assians, although not well constituted; for the kings sent settlers from Miletoupolis (having stripped that city of its inhabitants), so that Demetrius of Scepsis says that these Gargarians became semi-barbarian instead of Aeolians'). For ὥστε ... <εἰσίν> rather than ὥσπερ see Cook (1973) 257 n.
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The most credited hypothesis places the shrine in Orvieto. The Urbs Vetus of the Middle Ages is identified with the Etruscan Velzna by scholars, the Latin Volsinii, conquered by the Romans in 264 BC. Livy, Pliny, Florus, Horace, Metrodorus of Scepsis, all belonging to the 2nd century BC, clearly speak of ancient Volsinii, but never in relation to the Fanum Voltumnae. In the late 19th-century archaeologists uncovered parts of the walls and found large quantities of earthenware, and based on these findings in 1930s the archeologist Geralberto Buccolini set out the hypothesis that the Fanum was situated at the foot of Orvieto's tuffFrancesco Scanagatta, "Orvieto: emerge dagli scavi il Fanum Voltumnae" (in Italian) 22 August 2007. In particular, the Temple of Belvedere was discovered and identified as the Temple of Nortia.
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The general name of mnemonics, or memoria technica, was the name applied to devices for aiding the memory, to enable the mind to reproduce a relatively unfamiliar idea, and especially a series of dissociated ideas, by connecting it, or them, in some artificial whole, the parts of which are mutually suggestive. Mnemonic devices were much cultivated by Greek sophists and philosophers and are frequently referred to by Plato and Aristotle. In later times the poet Simonides was credited for development of these techniques, perhaps for no reason other than that the power of his memory was famous. Cicero, who attaches considerable importance to the art, but more to the principle of order as the best help to memory, speaks of Carneades (perhaps Charmades) of Athens and Metrodorus of Scepsis as distinguished examples of people who used well-ordered images to aid the memory.
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Strabo, Geography, Bk. 16, Ch. 4 > There are also Etruscan statues dispersed in various parts of the world, > which beyond a doubt were originally made in Etruria. I should have supposed > that these had been the statues only of divinities, had not Metrodorus of > Scepsis, who had his surname from his hatred to the Roman name, reproached > us with having pillaged the city of Volsinii for the sake of the two > thousand statues which it contained.Pliny The Elder, Natural History, Bk. > 34, Ch. 16 > Megasthenes informs us, that in India, serpents grow to such an immense > size, as to swallow stags and bulls; while Metrodorus says, that about the > river Rhyndacus, in Pontus, they seize and swallow the birds that are flying > above them, however high and however rapid their flight.Pliny The Elder, > Natural History, Bk. 8, Ch. 14 > At any other time, also, if a woman strips herself naked while she is > menstruating, and walks round a field of wheat, the caterpillars, worms, > beetles, and other vermin, will fall from off the ears of corn.
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The fullest ancient account of the life of Metrodorus is to be found in Strabo: > From Scepsis came also Demetrius, whom I often mention, the grammarian who > wrote a commentary on The Marshalling of the Trojan Forces, and was born at > about the same time as Crates and Aristarchus; and later, Metrodorus, a man > who changed from his pursuit of philosophy to political life, and taught > rhetoric, for the most part, in his written works; and he used a brand-new > style and dazzled many. On account of his reputation he succeeded, though a > poor man, in marrying brilliantly in Chalcedon; and he passed for a > Chalcedonian. And having paid court to Mithridates Eupator, he with his wife > sailed away with him to Pontus; and he was treated with exceptional honor, > being appointed to the judgeship from which there was no appeal to the king. > However, his good fortune did not continue, but he incurred the enmity of > men less just than himself and revolted from the king when he was on the > embassy to Tigranes the Armenian.
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Metrodorus is frequently mentioned by Classical authors such as Cicero, Quintilian, and Pliny the Elder as one famous for the power of his memory. He was thought to have been a key figure in the development of the art of memory, a loosely associated group of mnemonic principles and techniques which are used to organize memory impressions, improve recall, and assist in the combination and 'invention' of ideas.The Art of Memory, Frances A. Yates, 1966, pp 39-42 The memory of Metrodorus is mentioned in Cicero's De oratore (Book 2, 88) where Crassus states, "I have seen the greatest men, men endowed with an almost divine memory; at Athens Carneades; and Metrodorus of Scepsis in Asia, whom I hear is still living; and both these said, that they used ideas upon those places, which they wanted to retain in their memories, in the same manner as one does characters upon wax."Cicero, De oratore (trans. William Guthrie), London, 1755 The Elder Pliny's reference to Metrodorus' powers of memory explicitly states that he perfected the art of memory which was itself thought to have been created by Simonides of Ceos.
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