Editing Simonides of Ceos (section)

====The inventor====
During the excavation of the rubble of Scopas's dining hall, Simonides was called upon to identify each guest killed. Their bodies had been crushed beyond recognition but he completed the gruesome task by correlating their identities to their positions (''loci'' in [[Latin language|Latin]]) at the table before his departure. He later drew on this experience to develop the 'memory theatre' or '[[memory palace]]', a system for [[mnemonic]]s widely used in [[orality|oral]] societies until the [[Renaissance]].<ref>[[Francis A. Yates]]. 'The Art of Memory', University of Chicago Press, 1966, p. 2</ref> According to Cicero, Themistocles wasn't much impressed with the poet's invention: "I would rather a technique of forgetting, for I remember what I would rather not remember and cannot forget what I would rather forget."<ref>Cicero ''de Fin.'' 2.104, cited by D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', Loeb Classical Library (1991), page 351</ref> 

The [[Suda]] credits Simonides with inventing "the third note of the lyre" (which is known to be wrong since the lyre had seven strings from the 7th&nbsp;century BC), and four letters of the Greek alphabet.<ref>Suda Σ&nbsp;439, cited, translated and annotated by D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric III'', page 330.</ref> Whatever the validity of such claims, a creative and original turn of mind is demonstrated in his poetry as he likely invented the genre of the victory ode<ref>D. Campbell, ''Greek Lyric Poetry'', Bristol Classical Press (1982), page 379</ref> and he gave persuasive expression to a new set of ethical standards (see [[Simonides#Ethics|Ethics]]).