Mnemonics

   Zeus had many wives, Hera being his number one and his chief nemesis. But he was also married to Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. Zeus sired with her the nine muses: Calliope, patron of epic poetry; Terpsichore, goddess of choral dance; Clio, presiding over history; Erato, over lyric and amatory poetry; Euterpe, over music; Melpomene, over tragedy; Polyhmnia, over sacred music; Thalia, over comic and bucolic poetry; and Urania, over astronomy.

   Mnemosyne came from a distinguished background, the daughter of heaven and earth (Uranus and Gaea). Her godly duty was to protect memory, and through her name has come the word mnemonics, the art of improving one's memory. In Greek, mnemonikos means mindful. The system mnemonics depends on association. A word, a name, a territory—almost anything can be used to stimulate memory. To remember how to distinguish stationery from stationary, for example, one might think of the fact that a letter has two e's and no a's. Therefore, the word for the paper on which letters are written is stationery.