V.
The pathological side of memory seems to have been little studied by the ancients. Augustine referred to the possibility of illusions of memory in the way already mentioned. Seneca tells of a certain Sabinus who had so bad a memory that he forgot the name of Ulysses, and again of Achilles, and sometimes of Priam, though he knew them as well as we remember our schoolmasters.[48]Some remarkable cases of amnesia were reported to the Elder Pliny. “Nothing whatever in man,” hesays, “is of so frail a nature as the memory; for it is affected by disease, by injuries, and even by fright; being sometimes partially lost and atothertimes entirely so. A man who received a blow from a stone forgot the names of the letters (of the alphabet) only; while, on the other hand, another person, who fell from a very high roof could not so much as recollect his mother or his relations and neighbors. Another person in consequence of some disease forgot his own servants even; and Messala Corvinus, the orator, lost all recollection of his own name.”[49]While these cases are good illustrationsof certain diseases of memory, they are not reported with sufficient accuracy and detail to render them of much scientific value. Ancient thinkers appear not to have seen the importance of studying the pathological conditions of memory.