It's true. People can memorize 100'000s of words of text and this ability was common place among learned people. The pali canon is an example. I found myself remembering huge amounts, having just read a text, with no intentional effort to recall after a month in a forest monastery and in the 4 months I was there but afterwards when exposed to the internet and sensory stuff again found my ability to recall texts had gone.

"What is the cause of people forgetting texts they had learned before?" I can't remember the precise answer but that was one such line in the texts.

Today if you say that you sound kinda crazy.`

but like socrates there's still a few orders of wandering mendicant homeless-like orders out there (the theravada forest tradition being an example)