BOOK VII. XXIV. 88-xxv. 92 



tweiity-two races gave judgements in as many 

 languages, in an assembly addressing each race in 

 turn without an intei^preter. A pei-son in Greece 

 named Charmadas recited the contents of any 

 volumes in hbraries that anyone asked him to quotc, 

 just as if he were reading them. Finally, a memoria 

 technica was constructed, wliich was invented by the 

 lyric poet Simonides and pcrfected by Metrodorus 

 of Scepsis, enabhng anything heard to be repeated 

 in the identical words. Also no other human faculty 

 is equally fragile : injuries from, and even appre- 

 hensions of, diseases and accident may afFect in some 

 cases a single field of memory and in others the 

 whole. A man has been knoA\Ti when struck by a 

 stone to forget how to read and write but nothing 

 else. One who feU from a very high roof forgot his 

 mother and his relatives and friends, another when 

 ill forgot his servants also ; the orator Messala 

 Corvinus forgot liis own name. Similarly tentative 

 and hesitating lapses of memory often occur when 

 the body even when uninjured is in repose ; also the 

 gradual approach of sleep curtails the memory and 

 makes the unoccupicd mind wonder where it is. 



XX\'. The most outstanding instance of innate men- ExcepHmai 

 tal vigour I take to be the dictator Caesar ; and I am andcharacter 

 not now thinking of valour and resolution, nor of a of JuHus 

 loftiness embracing all the contents of the firmament 

 of heaven, but of native vigour and quickness winged 

 as it were with fire. We are told that he used to 

 write or read and dictate or listen simultaneously, 

 and to dictate to his secretaries four letters at once 

 on his important affairs — or, if otherwise unoccupied, 

 seven letters at once." He also fought fifty pitched 

 I)attles, and alone beat the record of Marcus Mar- 



VOL. II. 



565 



