Simonedes Childhood And Education

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Introduction:

"There is no better test of a man's work than time, which also reveals the thoughts which lay hidden in his breast," said Simonides, a nondescript bard who lived in ancient Greece. These words are aureate and commonplace, since it is well known that time shapes the thoughts of an individual. Obscure as he was for his grandiloquent poetry, Simonides only claim to fame lies in one major achievement that went unnoticed during his time: He inadvertently founded the basis of ‘Mnemonic Practice’- a branch of cognitive science and psychology. Mnemonic Practice is a branch of psychology that aims at studying memory in direct relation to places.

Mnemonics, in modern day psychology, are part of forensic studies used for investigating crime. While most branches of psychology trace their foundations to eminent thinkers and scientists, Mnemonics is the only sphere where a person who had little inkling of science or workings of the brain, helped establish a field of study on which research is ongoing to date, about 3000 years after the death of its founder- Simonides- a poet better known for using unscrupulous means for personal gain.

Birth of Simonides:

Simonides was born in 556BC, believed to be into a family of commoners who lived on the island of Ceos, also called Kos, in ancient Greece. His father Leoprepes was among the countless music teachers that flourished on the island.

Simonedes’ childhood and education:

Due to an ancient Hellenic tradition, choirs from villages and towns flocked to Delos, a city believed as the legendary birthplace of the Greco-Roman deity, Apollo. The choirs vied with one-another to win the highest accolades. Winners were rewarded lavishly by nobles and rulers and hence, singers and their masters could look forward to a luxurious life. Consequently, Kos, like other cities in the region, boasted of several budding singers who required skilled music masters, such as Simonides’ father.

Other details about Simonides family are not known since they were never clearly chronicled by any historian. That a poet called Simonides existed during this era is mentioned a handful of later Roman poets such as Qunitilian and Cicero, who also wrote critical appreciation of his poems and recorded some legends surrounding this mysterious figure.

Simonides is credited as being a good learner who soon mastered and perfected the art of writing odes and eulogies praising nobles and prominent personalities. He mastered his distinctive form of writing, favouring concision by dispensing prolixity in his poems. He was deeply superstitious, which reflected in his writings, where he attributed divine qualities of Athenian gods to people whom he praised through his poems.

Hence, pompous odes and eulogies that extolled far more virtues than a person possessed, such as those penned by Simonides, gained instant popularity, They were highly favoured by tyrants of the era, whose intentions were to gain fame within a disgruntled populace. Fortune soon smiled on young Simonides, known for his unique style of poetry, when Athenian tyrant Peisistratos, invited him to Athens to write poems that depicted him and his coterie in favourable light.

Move to Athens and prosperity:

Lured by visions of an opulent life, Simonides relocated to Athens around 530BC to write poems for Peisistratos and his "beneficial" regime. Simonides recited these poetries during banquets and other grand events hosted by the tyrannical ruler and almost attained the rank of the Royal Poet. He enriched his personal coffers during Peisistratos’ regime.

But his ambitions were cut short when Peisistratos died in 527BC and was succeeded by his two sons, Hippias and Hipparchus, who ruled Athens jointly. The brothers reign was largely beneficial to Athens despite some degree of despotism. Simonides thrived during their rule and amassed more wealth.

Political intrigue in Athens resulted in the assassination of Hipparchus in 514BC, by some close associates. The flattery Simonides heaped on Hipparchus can be gauged from his eulogy to Hipparchus, saying: "If noble death be virtue's foremost part, we above all men are by fortune blest, Striving with freedom's crown to honour Greece, we died, and here in endless glory, we rest."

Hippias, became paranoid after the assassination of Hipparchus and ruled Athens with an iron fist. Simonides by now had earned the title of a ‘sophos’ or wise man, in ancient Greece.

Flight from Athens:

This time, he used his "wisdom" for another purpose: Fearing he may be sucked into the vortex of Athenian politics and its inherent intrigues, Simonides fled to Thessaly, a city of the Byzantine empire.

Gains in Thessaly:

Despite suffering initial setbacks in relocating in Thessaly due to his Greek origin, Simonides, with his supine and subservient mannerisms, attracted the patronage of two major families of Thessaly- the Scopadae and Aleuadae. The two noble yet egocentric families vied with one-another for fame. Simonides, with his uncanny penchant for enriching himself, soon gained favour with Scopas, the head of the Scopadaes.

Simonides curried favour with Scopas to soon emerge as the family’s favourite bard who wrote in his unique style heaping praises upon their ancestry while attributing them with exaggerated qualities. Consequently, he was treated as a member of the Scopadae household.

Simonides the irritant:

Due to his excessive closeness to the family, Simonides soon became an irritant to Scopas, who had the dubious distinction of being a local hoodlum. As a result, Scopas would often warn Simonides, sometimes threatening him with dire consequences. But the poet and the ruffian always patched up since Simonides was obsequious, going great lengths to appease his benefactor.

Writers such as Cicero, Quintillian and comedy playwright Aristophanes depict Simonides as a servile miser: He would gatecrash banquets and parties hosted by aristocrats, hoping to attract more wealthy patrons- antics which angered Scopas.

Scopas, a narcissist, was an amateur wrestler who had won several accolades in local tournaments. Upon winning a prestigious local contest along with another athlete from Thessaly, Scopas asked Simonides to write an ode to celebrate the victory. He was to host a grand banquet to celebrate the win. Scopas offered lucrative remuneration to Simonides for the work

Ominous Occurrences:

Superstitious and avaricious, Simonides wrote a poem praising Scopas and other athletes, attributing them with powers of Greco-Roman deities. Scopas and the co-athlete were compared to Gemini, the mythical twins. The poem was said to extol Gemini more than Scopas, who was infuriated when he read the draft. Scopas reneged on his promise of a handsome pay to Simonides and instead, disposed him off scornfully paying only half the amount. He asked the poet to collect the remainder from the Gemini twins- the mythical gods, on whom Simonides had heaped more praises.

Simonides viewed this derision of Gemini as blasphemy and was smarting from Scopas’ tirade against his work. He believed, Scopas had vilified gods and hence, some "divine justice" would soon befall his benefactor.

Miraculous escape:

Still reeling from vituperation meted by Scopas but hoping to earn some fees by composing odes for diners, Simonides entered the dining hall before other guests began arriving. As guests arrived, he made mental notes of where they were seated, hoping to write brief, poetic stanzas that would appeal to these nobles, thus accruing him some rewards. After all guests were seated, Simonides was preparing to recite his plaudits, when a guard informed the poet that "two brothers" were waiting outside the hall for an "urgent" talk.

Simonides exited the dining hall to meet his visitors but to his astonishment, found nobody on the streets. Believing this was a practical prank played by Scopas to level scores for writing an ode praising the Gemini twins, Simonides prepared to return to the dining hall in search of patrons.

The premonition comes true:

As he was about to enter the dining hall, Simonides experienced a tremor and heard a loud sound: The dining hall’s roof and pillars had collapsed. Diners who included nobles and their cohorts, servants and attendants as well as his patron Scopas, had perished within a few seconds of his absence. Simonides had a miraculous escape and was the sole survivor of the tragedy. The poet later attributed the close call to the Gemini twins, who supposedly had summoned him outside.

Imagery seems to have first attracted learned attention when its powerful mnemonic properties were discovered by the Greek poet and sophos (wise man) Simonides (c.556-c.468 B.C.E.). According to a legend passed on by Cicero (106-43 B.C.E.), the discovery occurred at a banquet in Thessaly which Simonides attended in order to present a lyric poem written in praise of the host. Simonides was called outside shortly after his performance, and during his absence the roof of the banqueting hall suddenly collapsed, crushing the other diners, and mangling many of their corpses beyond recognition. Simonides, however, found he was able to identify the bodies (important for proper burial) by consulting his visual memory image of the people sitting around the banqueting table, which enabled him to identify the corpses according to where they were found. From this experience,

[Simonides] inferred that persons desiring to train this faculty [of memory] must select places and form mental images of the things they wish to remember and store those images in the places, so that the order of the places will preserve the order of the things, and the images of the things will denote the things themselves, and we shall employ the places and images respectively as a wax writing-tablet and the letters written on it. (Cicero, De Oratore, II, lxxxvi – translation: Sutton & Rackham, 1942).

Supposedly, this was the origin of the mnemonic technique known as the method of loci, described by Roman rhetoricians such as Cicero and Quintilian (c.35-c.95 C.E.), and widely employed, in various forms, by orators and others from classical, through medieval, and up until early modern times. Indeed, it has been argued that this now largely forgotten technique had a quite significant impact on the development of the Western intellectual tradition throughout the ancient, medieval and renaissance periods (Yates, 1966; Spence, 1985; Carruthers, 1990, 1998; Small, 1997; Rossi, 2000); for one thing it helped to keep imagery at the forefront of thinking about cognition during these times. The method of loci was originally mainly used by orators to remember the points to be made in a speech, in their proper order, although related imagery based techniques would later come to be used for other purposes, such as spiritual exercises. In one of the method's more straightforward forms, the orator would prepare by committing the layout of a complex but familiar architectural space (e.g. the interior of a temple) to memory, so as to be able to vividly imagine its various regions and features. He would then imagine objects, symbolizing the points to be remembered (e.g. a sword to represent battle), placed at various loci (strategic landmark positions, such as the temple's niches and windows) around the space. The points could then be recalled in their proper order, whilst making a speech, simply by imagining moving around the space along a predetermined route, "seeing" the objects by coming upon them in their appointed loci, and thereby being reminded, in sequence, of the points they symbolized.

In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, very elaborate versions of the method evolved, using specially learned imaginary spaces (Memory Theaters or Palaces), and complex systems of predetermined symbolic images, often imbued with occult or spiritual significances. However, modern experimental research has shown that even a simple and easily learned form of the method of loci can be highly effective (Ross & Lawrence, 1968; Maguire et al., 2003), as are several other imagery based mnemonic techniques (see section 4.2 of the main entry).

Simonides was a professional mark-maker, that is, poet. His marks comprised oral entertainments for banquets, public occasions, and the like. In this, the most famous instance in his career, the poet played the role of the classic Greek parasite, in former days no more than a gate crasher who kept from being thrown out of parties by being witty — a real fool who knew how to trade words for food. Simonides, the giver of marks, was therefore abject from the start, by being one of a clan of peripheral characters who lived at the margins and off of the margins. He took what he could get. His job this particular evening was a minor exception, payment being arranged by the host, Scopas, a local bully and amateur wrestler whose recent victory this banquet celebrated. Scopas this evening seemed anything but abject, although he was in fact only half of a pair.

As a part of normal poetic preliminaries, Simonides set about memorizing the names of the guests, employing the classical technique of associating names and other data with the guests' seat locations. Simonides is credited with inventing this technique of "memory places," but it was probably old by his time. Placing is a form of abjecting; in fact, it instantiates the literal meaning of abjection, which is to "throw aside." Of course, poets "fix" their audiences in other, more mundane ways. "Fascination," a phallic gaze, has the immediate effect of freezing its victims. And, during performance, the audience is implored to sit quietly, not to move — in short, to play dead. Scopas's audience did indeed learn this part.

This evening, Scopas had paid for marks — remarks — to be made in his honor, praising his recent victory in the ring. Getting a eulogy before your funeral was a bit of hubris on Scopas's part. Simonides sensed the danger. If the gods were alerted to Scopas's boasting, they would visit this bully with a cosmic correction in some back alley. In order to offer Scopas some protection against his own arrogance, Simonides included in his otherwise flawless offering a passage praising the twin gods, Castor and Pollux ("the Dioscuri"). The choice was apt. The twin gods were originally mortal brothers who had to share a prize of immortality between them. They took turns. One ruled the underworld while the other ruled the live world. Cosmically, they represented the relation between the halves of the sky. However, being dumb as well as arrogant, Scopas did not care for this unsolicited bit of religious devotion. Feeling that he had been cheated/abjected by this pious addition in Simonides' poem, Scopas stiffed Simonides in return, saying that if he wanted to collect his full fee, he could go to the gods for their share (i.e. "go to hell"). With only half the promised amount in his purse, Simonides looked for compensation on the banquet table. Halfway through the meal, however, word arrived that "two strangers" wished to see Simonides outside the hall. Leaving his couch, Simonides could find no one in the street and, thinking this a further joke of Scopas's started to go back in; but before he could reenter the banquet hall roof collapsed, crushing all occupants. The abject giver of marks, the parasite, was the only survivor; and the host and his guests, who had been imaginarily pinned to a spot by Simonides' art of memory and poetic performance were now permanently pinned by abject architecture.

a debt to the dead

After laboriously removing the overburden of stone, tile, and wood, relatives of the guests were horrified to find that they were unable to identify the bodies for proper burial. There could be no greater crisis in a family's relation to the ancestral dead than the loss of identity, committing a soul to perpetual wandering. Simonides was summoned back in (a mirror of his mysterious call out) to help, and help he did, turning his poetic trick into humanitarian aid, exchanging locations now for names, so that names could enable another, more cosmic exchange of living for dead, this world for another.

The story is "about" marks and the way conventional marks are solicited and given in society, but the usual function of marks, representation of some story or content, is thrown back onto itself. We see the backstage, the technics, of the poet's show. The clues given are about a system of exchanges that is never mentioned directly: Scopas, himself a "half" (one wrestler), withholds half a fee because half a poem was about twin gods. Simonides, a half-character (parasite), eats a half meal before being called outside (a site beside the original banquet hall, a "para-site") to meet two men, who have disappeared. The building itself demonstrates the reciprocity of architecture between full and abject states (ruin). When Simonides returns to identify the corpses, it is by the original halves of the mnemonic technique: the name that had been made into a place then yields a name. The method of abjecting information to a fixed point yielded its grim harvest, and the families are permitted the ritual exchange of the body for the soul, another figure of halves.

The most mysterious set of matched halves is the story itself, which splits exactly into two legs that meet at the collapse of the building. Simonides' call out is mirrored by his post-mortem forensic call back in. The living banquet is exchanged for the funeral one. The praise for the living Scopas finds its lost twin, the funeral panegyric. And, Scopas's jocular curse, sending Simonides to the gods, is ironically turned on the boastful host. Chiasmus, "mirror structure," gives us a blue-print for abjection, a diagrammatic 'V' or 'X' to follow in pursuit of the abject in the land of marks.

Few stories are as explicit about the exact amount paid for abjection, but we might have guessed: abjection is nowhere more economically expressed as by a lost glove. Also, we are rarely given is the precise "geometrical" relationship between abjection and the normal, "un-abject" representational function of marks.

Abjection moves into the realm of the artifact itself, into the pure mark as if into the taine or bezel of the mirror, disdaining the pleasure of illusion for the bareness of technique. To what was Scopas compared in Simonides' poem? We are not told. What is represented reflects the act of making itself, the construction-by-halves of artificial memory, the construction-by-halves of stories themselves: the monsters created by writer and the reader in their brief encounter, just as an ancient commonplace expression described copulating lovers as a monster with two backs. The particulars of this crude image are accurate. Readers and writers, no less than lovers, are all back. The act of poetic comprehension is inwardly constructed. It cannot be appreciated from the outside, that is to say, in terms of "extrinsic" properties, for there are no extrinsic properties proper to it. The story contaminates us who, in the act of reading it, form half of a whole. We are the latest residents of Simonides' system of mnemonic places. Like the first, "late" residents in the story, we are implored to be silent during the recitation of the poem, implored not to move by the poet's system of memory places, implored to play the role of the immortal deceased in our reception of poetry. We are abjected as part of a poetic pair, but made god-like in the process.

 

look at the clues again

The clues given are about a system of exchanges that is never mentioned directly: Scopas,himself a "half" (one wrestler), withholds half a fee because half a poem was about twin gods. Simonides,a half-character (parasite), eats a half meal before being called outside (a site beside the original banquet hall, a "para-site") to meet two men, who have disappeared.The building itself demonstrates the reciprocity of architecture between full and abject states (ruin). When Simonides returns to identify the corpses, it is by the original halves of the mnemonic technique: the name that had been made into a place then yields a name. The method of abjecting information to a fixed point yielded its grim harvest, and the families are permittedthe ritual exchange of the body for the soul, another figure ofhalves.

The most mysterious set of matched halves is the story itself, which splits exactly into two legs that meet at the collapse of the building. Simonides'call out is mirrored by his post-mortem forensic call back in.The living banquet is exchanged for the funeral one. The praise for the living Scopas finds its lost twin, the funeral panegyric.And, Scopas's jocular curse, sending Simonides to the gods, is ironically turned on the boastful host. Chiasmus, "mirror structure," gives us a blue-print for abjection, a diagrammatic'V' or 'X' to follow in pursuit of the abject in the land of marks.

the events diagramed

The Simonides anecdote's structure is revealed by seeing how pairs of elements ("B/B-crossstructures") share, split, or reverse some value.

The pairs (first terms constitutethe first set of events, second terms mark the second set, inreverse order):

* Simonides splits poem he is hired to present / the "poem" is the story

* Scopas refuses to pay / the relatives pay Simonides for his services

* Scopas tell Simonides to "go to the gods" for payment / Scopas goes to the gods in death

* Simonides remembers guests names by noting their places / names are given for places

* Simonides' meal is interrupted / payment is promised to locate the guests

* Two men call him outside / relatives call him back

* The banquet hall as inside / banquet hall collapses (becomes an outside)

 

B/B-cross structures define two lines of action

 

a flip event creates a "non-parallelism"

 

the resulting structure can be traversed in a variety of orders; Simonides uses the V-order

 

The multiplicity of B/B-cross structures creates a flexible set of narrative possibilities. Terms can been countered along the line of B's, B-crosses, or B/B-cross pairs.Switches can be made to create a "hybrid" motion. Simonides'chiasmus is "strong" because he presents all of the B elements in sequence, cueing the audience by referring to "missing halves" or missing portions: the halved poem, a wrestler as half of a pair, half fee unpaid, half a meal, the twin gods,etc. When the story itself is divided in two by the collapse ofthe banquet hall, the audience is prepared to meet "the missing halves." The conclusion has Scopas celebrated not as a living athlete but as a dead hero. The curious dynamics of the pangyric(speech of praise) is hinted: one praises in order to put at a distance. The dead are sealed off from the living by funeral speeches that speak no ill. Scopas in life courted disaster by paying for a pangyric. Modern heroes know better: they prefer to be "roasted" (insulted) by friends as the highest form of honor. The roast follows the theology of the evil eye: praise attracts a correctiveaction that will re-set all accomplishment to zero.

Not only is the bolagram fundamentally "chiastic," but the themes of motility, scale, and semblance are given vividforms when connected to the action of artificial memory. The story seems to say that memory itself is chaistic, a dialectic between places formed and contents located within those places. "Motility"activates this memory, as the poet/rhetorician "walks through" the memory place to store or retrieve images. The theme of scale introduces, however, the theological/magical use of memory in the sense that Camillo would later develop in his "MemoryTheater" – a capacity to use memory as imagination,and imagination as memory, particular a memory of origins. Scale,the element that "flips" inside to outside, is Lacanian in its use of external objects to retain and order mental ideas.The final theme of semblance, the goal of mnemonics, is ultimately theological and monstrous, not just in this anecdote but in the tradition of memory places as well. The renowned memory theorist Ramon Llull connected memory arts with meditation and spiritual ascendance; and was condemned by those who agreed precisely that the memory arts were related to magic rather than mechanics. Camillo connected the art of memory places to Cabalistic meditation and made the final act played in his memory theater a literal union with God.

Simonides' story emphasizes the importance and versatility of the B/B-cross structures. Because they lead to any number of narrative strategies, they can set up a resilient structure of motility, scale, and semblance, ABC/C'/B-cross inalmost any circumstances. In a curious way, they remind us ofthe sorites of Lewis Carroll and return us to the intrinsic self-referential nature of anyand every cross.

 

footnote

Not accidentally, most "myths of origins" involve some petitio principii –"begging the question," or, presuming or requiring to be presumed the existence of the very thing that the story of origins originates. Thus, Simonides' invention of memory places presumes the existence and already-expert use of the art of memory places. This "recursion of origins" can also be found in Vico's theory of the origin of mankind. Proto-humans are frightened by the thunder into obeying the signs of the sky; following the example of thunder, they develop articulate language. But, of course, these first humans would, in hearing thunder, already have known what words were. The thunder, in effect, raised the significance level of something they already practiced.

A parallel story provides some insight. The blind and deaf Helen Keller, in her famous autobiography,recounted the story of her first awareness of language. Her teacher signed the word for water while holding Keller's hand to the water coming from a pump. Rapidly switching between the signed wordand the feel of the cold water "shocked" Keller intorealizing the full possibilities of language. But, of course,she already knew how to sign words and used them daily. In her previous use, however, she lived in a world where sign and objector sign and need existed in a 1:1 relationship. The water rushing from the pump, like the Vichian thunder, raised the level of an already existent phenomenon.

Simonides "raises the level" of the already common practice of memory places by showing its chiasmatic quality. Like the Vichian thunder, this mirror structure has cosmic and theological implications. The chi transforms a linear narrative into a double monster with real and shadowed parts that communicate to each other through omission and lack (the theme of halves) – i.e. "negatively." The bolagram models chiasmus directly and follows the same logicof petitio principii. It presumes that what it will accomplishhas already been accomplished, in a logic of "retrospect." The present "is already" the future and the past. Simonides' elevation of the common practice of memory places is a chi, and the art is a chi. Recursion is the key to the mystery of origins.

Simonides of Ceos,  (born c. 556 BC, Iulis, Ceos [now Kéa, Greece]—died c. 468 BC, Acragas [now Agrigento, Sicily, Italy]), Greek poet, noted for his lyric poetry, elegiacs, and epigrams; he was an uncle of the Greek lyric poet Bacchylides.

Simonides began writing poetry on Ceos, but he was soon called to the court of the Peisistratids (the tyrants of Athens), which was a lively cultural and artistic centre in the 6th century BC. (See ancient Greek civilization: The later Archaic periods.) He later visited other powerful figures in Thessaly, in northern Greece, such as Scopas, ruler of Crannon.

Simonides lived in Athens after the fall of the Peisistratid tyranny and the founding of the democracy. He was close to important people there, including the politician and naval strategist Themistocles, and he achieved numerous successes in dithyrambic competitions. (A later poet credited Simonides with 57 victories.) In the competition, Simonides was selected (above such celebrated poets as Aeschylus) to compose the elegiac verses commemorating those who fell in the battle of Marathon. He celebrated the Greek victories of the Persian Wars, including a famous encomium for the Spartan dead atThermopylae. Simonides maintained close ties with the Spartan general and regent Pausanias. He traveled to Sicily as a guest of the courts of Hieron I, tyrant of Syracuse, and Theron, tyrant of Acragas; tradition there made him and Bacchylides the rivals of Pindar. He is said to have reconciled the two tyrants when they quarreled.

Of Simonides’ extensive literary corpus, only fragments remain, most of them short. There are many epigrams written in elegiac couplets intended to be carved on monuments to celebrate a death, a victory, or other deeds worthy of memory. (However, scholars suspect that many of the epigrams attributed to Simonides were not composed by him.) Simonides’ threnoi, songs of lamentation used for funerals, were particularly famous in antiquity—as the praise of the poets Catullus and Horace and the educator Quintilian demonstrates—because they showed genius in combining affecting poetry with praise of the deceased. Simonides played an important role in the development of the epinicion, a song in honour of an athletic victory. He is the author of the earliest epinicion for which the date (520 BC) and the victor (Glaucus of Carystus, for boy’s boxing) are certain. The fragments display an epinician tone that contrasts with Pindar’s high seriousness, as Simonides praises the victor with ironic and humorous references. Simonides was known for his tendency toward concision and his rejection of prolixity. He defined poetry as a speaking picture and painting as mute poetry.

There emerges from his longer fragments, such as the encomium of Scopas, an original and nonconformist personality that questions the innate and absolute values of the aristocratic ethic, which are the basis of Pindar’s worldview. Simonides’ worldview, in contrast, is in sympathy with the social setting determined by the rise of the new mercantile classes. His moral outlook is pragmatic, realistic, and relativistic; he is conscious of the imperfection and frailty of human accomplishments.

* TOPICS

* Greek literature

* literature

* poetry(literature)

Simonides changed the conception and practice of poetic activity by insisting that a patron who commissioned a poem owed the poet fair remuneration. Simonides’ professional policy gave rise to many anecdotes about his greed. The most famous in antiquity concerned a poem he was commissioned to write for Scopas of Thessaly. When Simonides delivered the poem, Scopas paid him only half the sum they had agreed on, telling him to get the rest from the Dioscuri, to whose praise the poet had devoted much of the poem. During the banquet at the palace to celebrate Scopas’s victory, Simonides was summoned outside at the request of two young men; when he went outside, the young men were gone. When the palace then collapsed and he alone survived, he realized that the young men had been the Dioscuri. Having insisted on being paid and having been credited with the invention of a (lost) method of memorization, Simonides can be seen as a precursor of the 5th-century Sophists.

In 1992 new papyrus fragments of his elegies were published; among them are parts of a long composition on the battle of Plataea (479 BC), in which the decisive role of the Spartans is emphasized. The fragments also include pederastic works and poems that were of the type meant for symposia (dinner parties).

Life:

Simonedes, also spelt as Simonidis, was born in Ceos, in ancient Greece in 556BC. The ancient Greek historical account, Suda, claims Simonedes was born to Leoprepes, one of the several music teachers who flourished in Ceos, due to a tradition that choirs from several nearby cities and townships sent singers to perform at Delos, renowned as the birth place of mythical Greek god, Apollo. The young Simonedes is said to have mastered the art of writing poetry- usually extolling virtues of some nobleman or citizen who made extraordinary contribution to the country and, the art of choir singing. His father, Leoprepes, taught him these skills, which Simonedes developed further as he grew up. He is credited with pioneering the art of writing odes- or victory songs- for rulers and eminent citizens, in a unique style that highlighted their achievements while paying a tribute to their families and personality.

Rise to Eminence:

Simonedes, according to records, was an eccentric yet ambitious. Drawn by the lure of luxurious and opulent life, he travelled to Athens, where he met the despotic ruler, Hipparchus, who believed in self-aggrandizement and hence, became an avid fan of Simonedes, who used his skills of ode writing effectively to please the king and his noblemen, soon gaining the rank of a top and favoured royal courtier. Simonedes allegedly turned a blind eye to the atrocities inflicted upon citizens by Hipparchus and his brother, Hippias, who ruled jointly, but extolled their virtues through his odes for pecuniary gain. Simonedes profiteering in Athens was cut short abruptly when some nobles conspired, overthrew and assassinated Hipparchus and Hippias in 514BC, in a coup.

Fearing reprisals for his unflinching support to Hipparchus and Hippias, the poet fled Athens and eventually settled in Thessaly- a city, which according to Greek philosopher Plutarch- had scant respect for poetry and odes. However, Simonedes used his skills to sufficiently gain favour and patronage of two of the richest, noble families of Thessaly, the Scopadae and Aleuadae. Rivalry between these two families caused the Scopadae to protect and patronize Simonedes more, as the poet embarked once again on writing odes for his benefactors.

Due to his eccentric behaviour and the desire for an opulent life, Simonedes is said to have placed himself in awkward and sometimes, life threatening situations often. One account states, Scopas, head of the Scopadae clan, once asked him to pen a victory ode for a notable athlete, also patronized by the family. An over-enthused Simonedes authored a poem attributing the athlete with Greek mythical characters, which angered Scopas, who paid him only half the fee. Despite, Simonedes put an affront that helped maintain his relations with Scopas that directly contributed towards his startling psychological findings.

Historians state, Scopas invited Simonedes to a grand dinner along with several noble men. For some reason, Simonedes left the dining hall. One legend claims, a guard at the dining hall summoned Simonedes saying two of his friends wanted an urgent meeting. Soon after Simonedes departure, an inferno ravaged the dining hall, killing Scopas and members of his family as well as other nobles. Despite best efforts to douse the fire and save diners, the hall was gutted.

Since Simonedes was the only survivor who had a miraculous escape before the blaze, he was summoned to identify any guests, if possible, based on severely charred bodies and their locations in the hall. Despite the horrifying scene, Simonedes managed to recall where some of the nobles were seated that led to their otherwise unidentifiable mortal remains, being handed over to their families for proper burial. This unique feat earned several brickbats as well as accolades for Simonedes. Some criticized him of trying to profit from an accident while others hailed him for his memory.

Simonedes justified his identification of corpses saying that organization of a place and memory are interlinked. He could recall where most ill fated diner was seated and hence, could identify their charred remains. While his words drew ridicule at the time, Simonedes had unwittingly laid the basis of the study of memory and brain- a field that would gain great significance over 2000 years after his death.

Final Days:

Lust for luxurious life drove Simonedes to search for noble patrons, succeeding uncannily at every such attempt. In quest of such sponsors, Simonedes befriended Heiron, a nobleman of Syracuse. Various unverifiable accounts of Simonedes last days in Sicily and Syracuse exist. It is widely believed, Simonedes died in 486BC in Sicily, enjoying opulent lifestyle, till his end.

Works:

Despite being a poet favoured by the Greco-Roman rulers and elite during his era, Simonedes holds the unique distinction of being the first person in the world to point out the importance of memory as essential for humans.

Simonedes also expounded that every man, in adverse conditions and calamities, is likely to resort to unfair or illicit means to survive. Explained simply, it denotes, every human being will behave well and live in conformity with accepted societal norms, traditions, rules and regulations, when content and happy. However, the same person, when confronted with extraordinary stress or disastrous circumstances leading to sorrow, may resort to some form of crime. These statements are aptly reflected in modern criminal psychology that studies behaviour of perfectly normal human beings who resort to bestiality when over stressed by some insurmountable situation.

Simonedes stated that Gods too could not resist necessity- a theory that remains highly debatable in spiritual terms. This theory is debated as several religions state that God Almight sent messiahs to Earth to teach them righteous living. Thus, if God had no necessity to reach out to humans, the requirement to send messengers or prophets would never arise.

Influence on modern psychology:

Unknown to this Hellenic poet, his actions and observations have influenced at least two studies in modern psychology- importance and study of memory and criminal psychology. The identification of mortal remains of Scopas and other nobles by Simonedes is attributed to his sharp memory. However, contemporary scientists of that era were unaware of the close relations between this vital body organ and the manner in which people can recollect or narrate.

Memory: Experiments conducted much later by scientists and psychologists now conclusively prove the link between memory, brain and a person’s intelligence. For example, people with a higher brain function possess better memory which culminates into intelligence- thus causing an individual to perform well at studies and work. Modern day psychologists define memory as a brain function that involves information processing.

Information or data is gathered by the brain through the five main sensory organs- ears, eyes, nose, tongue and skin. This information is encoded as memory in the human brain as experience and stored for use later, while dealing with similar situations or slightly different circumstances. And when such opportunities arise, the brain decrypts past memories that enables the person to react accordingly, either for pleasure or to avoid pain.

For example, a child who has touched fire and sustained burns, will forever be careful when dealing with any smouldering object. Animals, including humans, use their olfactory (smell) senses to identify places and objects. Nowadays, aromatherapy is an accepted form of non conventional medicine used to treat various ailments through fragrant oils and herbs. Taste decides the popularity of certain foods and cuisine, sensitivity is responsible for the development of special crèmes and lotions.

Memory is also associated with some major psychiatric disorders including chronic depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The former is cited as one of the main reasons for suicides while PTSD has disastrous effects on life of its victims, which includes soldiers, policemen and fire brigade personnel, physicians, paramedics, nurses, journalists and rescue workers- all categorized as ‘first responders’ in any crises scenario. Disturbing memories of these events remain long with these ‘first responders’ causing most of them to relive them through vivid dreams or various forms of depression that can lead to substance abuse or irrational behaviour.

Criminal psychology: Simonedes aptly stated that normal, gentle and happy, law abiding citizens can commit bestial acts when facing excruciatingly painful situations. Examples include: foeticide, filicide, fratricide, familicide, genocide, uxoricide and senicide and suicide, most of which are committed when a person is faced with vicissitude or exigency.

Several well-chronicled modern day crimes reveal how well educated, affluent and sane persons were forced into committing such heinous acts when confronted with situations they believed were beyond their control and ending their own life or killing somebody was the sole solution.

As direct or indirect result of Simonedes statements, a specialized branch called Criminal Psychology evolved. This field considers various factors that led to the cause of a crime and the thought process of a criminal that led to committing such an act. Most penal codes in today’s world therefore evaluate a criminal psychologically and heinous acts such as murders are classified into various degrees such as culpable homicide, homicide, first degree murder, manslaughter and self defence, among others. Penalties are meted out according to the psychological assessment of the convict and extenuating circumstances.

Simonedes was invited to a banquet with the king and other people and, for some reason, Simonedes has to leave the room or the building. During this time the building collapses and a major fire breaks out and everybody dies. Simonedes is asked to help identify the people who were there because what they don’t wanta do is bury the king in some commoner’s grave and some commoner in the king’s grave. Simonedes is the first person that basically shows that by using an organizational scheme, that is, he identifies where everybody is sitting by where they were sitting at the table, and thus, he was able to identify where the king was and other folks. So he’s really the first person to point out the importance of organization with memory.

Ends