The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

  For Bodin’s purpose I would have chosen the parallel between Cato the Younger and Phocion: for in that pair there could with verisimilitude be found an inequality – to the advantage in the Roman.

  As for Marcellus, Sylla and Pompey, I quite see that their exploits in war are more expansive, more glorious and more splendid than those of the Greeks whom Plutarch puts in parallel to them; but, no less in war as elsewhere, the most beautiful and most virtuous deeds are not always the most celebrated ones. I often find the names of Captains overshadowed by the splendour of other names of lesser merit: witness Labienus, Ventidius, Telesinus and many others. And if I had to look at things in such a way as to complain on behalf of the Greeks, might I not say that Camillus is far less to be compared to Themistocles; the Gracchi to Agis and Cleomenes; Numa to Lycurgus?

  But it is lunacy to wish to judge from one aspect things which present so many facets. When Plutarch compares men he does not thereby make them equal. Who could ever bring out their differences more clearly and conscientiously! When he comes to match the victories, the martial exploits and the might of the armies led by Pompey, and his triumphs, against those of Agesilaus, this is what he says: ‘I do not believe that even Xenophon, had he been alive, would have dared to judge them comparable to those of Agesilaus, even if he had been allowed to write all he wished in his favour.’ Does he talk of matching Lysander to Sylla? ‘There is,’ he says, ‘no comparison, neither in the number of victories nor the hazards run in battle: for Lysander only won two naval victories…’ and so on.

  In that, he is not cheating the Romans out of anything: he cannot have wronged them merely by placing them beside the Greeks, no matter what disparity there was between them. Plutarch does not weigh them in the lump; he does not prefer one to the other over all: one after the other he matches piece against piece, circumstance against circumstance. So if you wanted to convict him of partiality you would have to take one particular judgement of his and tease it out or else make a general criticism: that he was wrong to match this Roman against that Greek since there were others which more closely resembled each other and were better fitted for comparison.

  33. The tale of Spurina

  [Reflections on Julius Caesar, similar to those we find in Shakespeare, lead Montaigne to compare the powers of bodily vices and those of the mind. Moderation is preferred even to most acts of virtue when they are marked by rapture or ecstasy.]

  [A] Philosophy believes she has not made a bad use of her resources when she has bestowed on Reason sovereign mastery over our soul and authority to bridle our appetites. Those who judge that there are no ppetites more violent than the ones engendered by love have on their side the facts that they partake of both body and soul and that every man is swayed by them in such a way that his very health depends on them, so that even medicine is sometimes constrained to serve them as a pimp.

  But on the opposite side we could also say that this bodily element somewhat lessens them and weakens them, for bodily appetites are subject to satiety and are susceptible to material remedies. Several men who wished to deliver their souls from the continual alarms caused by bodily appetite have resorted to gelding or castrating those parts which were stirred or depraved.1 Others have entirely subdued the powers and ardour of those members by frequent compresses of cold things such as snow or vinegar. For this purpose our ancestors used their haire, a stuff made of woven horsehair which some made into undershirts and others into girdles to torment their loins.2 Not long ago a prince told me that in his youth, on a solemn feast-day in the court of King Francis I when everyone was wearing their finery, he felt the desire to wear one of these haires which he had at home and which had belonged to my lord his father; but however devout he was he could not endure waiting for night to come to take it off, and it made him ill for a long period period. He added that he did not think that there was any youthful lust so sharp as not to be mortified by the use of such a remedy. But perhaps he had not made an assay of the most stinging lusts, for experience shows us that such an emotion can often subsist beneath rough and filthy garments and that horsehair does not always make sages of the men who wear it.

  Xenocrates set about it more vigorously: his disciples, to make an assay of his continence, smuggled into his bed Lais, that beautiful and famous courtesan, quite naked apart from her ‘love-filtres’, that is, her beauty and her wanton charms. Xenocrates felt that, despite his doctrine and his rules of conduct, his intractable body was beginning to mutiny; so he seared those members of his which had lent an ear at that rebellion.3 Yet when the passions are all in the soul, as in ambition, covetousness and the rest, they are much more troublesome to reason, for reason cannot be succoured save by her own means: and those passions are not susceptible to satiety – indeed they are sharpened and increased by our enjoyment of them.

  The example of Julius Caesar, all by itself, can show us the inequality of these two sets of appetites, since never was there a man more addicted to sexual pleasure. The peculiar care he took over his person is one testimony to that: he even went so far as to make use of the most lascivious methods then current, such as plucking the hairs from his entire body and plastering it with the choicest perfumes. And he was himself quite handsome, white-skinned, with a beautiful slim waist, a full face with lively brown eyes – if we can believe Suetonius, for the statues of him to be seen in Rome do not correspond much to that description. Besides his wives, whom he changed four times (and not counting his youthful affaire with the King of Bithynia, Nicomedes) he had the maidenhead of Cleopatra, that so famous Queen of Egypt – witness little Caesarion who was born thereby. He also made love to Eunoe, Queen of Mauritania; in Rome to Posthumia, the wife of Servius Sulpitius; Lollia, the wife of Gabinus; to Tertulla, the wife of Crassus, and even to Mutia the wife of Pompey the Great (which was the cause, say the Roman historians, of her husband’s repudiating her – something which Plutarch admits he did not know). And the two Curios, father and son, later reproved Pompey when he married Caesar’s daughter for becoming the son-in-law of the man who had cuckolded him and whom he himself had regularly nicknamed Aegisthus.4

  In addition to all these he kept Servilia, the sister of Cato and mother of Marcus Brutus, which explains (everyone says) his deep affection for Brutus, who was born at a time when it was probable that he was the father.

  I am right therefore, it seems to me, to take him for a man given to the extremes of sexuality, a man of an exceedingly amorous complexion. But he was infinitely infected by another passion: ambition. When that clashed with the former, ambition forced it to give way at once.

  [C] In this connection I can think of no better case of these two passions being evenly balanced than that of Mechmet – the one who brought Constantinople under his yoke and finally extinguished the renown of Greece:5 he was equally indefatigable as both womanizer and soldier. But when these two passions occurred together in his life, his hot lust for fighting dominated his hot lust for women, which did not regain its a full account authority until it was out of its natural season and he was very old indeed, no longer capable of supporting the burden of warfare.

  A contrary example often cited is that of Ladislaus, King of Naples, and it is indeed worthy of note. He was a good general; he was courageous and he was ambitious. The main target of his ambition was to put his lust to work by enjoying some woman or other of rare beauty. His death was in keeping with this end. He reduced the town of Florence to such straits by a well executed siege that the citizens were ready to make terms to concede victory. But he conceded victory to them only on condition that they would deliver up to him a maiden of surpassing beauty of whom he had heard tell. They had no option but to grant her to him, averting public catastrophe by private outrage. She was the daughter of a doctor, famous in his day, who, finding himself trapped by so cruel a necessity, resolved on a momentous design. When everyone was occupied in dressing his daughter and arraying her in jewels and adornments which could make her pleasing to that new lover of he
rs, he too gave her something: an exquisitely perfumed lace-work handkerchief for her to use when the couple first lay together. In those parts ladies rarely forget to furnish themselves with one. That handkerchief was as poisoned as his art of medicine knew how. When the couple happened to wipe the open pores of their passionate flesh with it, it so suddenly filled them with its noxious fluid that at once their hot sweat turned cold and they died there in each other’s arms.

  Now to get back to Caesar.

  [A] His pursuit of pleasure never made him steal one single minute, never deflected him one inch, from any opportunity which was offered him to aggrandize himself. His passionate ambition ruled so sovereignly over all other passions and possessed his soul with such total authority, that, wherever it wanted to go, it carried him there. That vexes me when I reflect on the grandeur of that great man in all other respects and on his marvellous gifts; there was in him so great a competence in every sort of learning that there is virtually no field which he did not write about. He was an orator such that many rated his eloquence above Cicero’s. And he himself, in my judgement, did not think himself much inferior to him as far as that endowment goes: his two works against Cato were mainly written as a counterweight to Cicero’s fine words in his Cato. And, as for the rest, was there ever a man’s soul so vigilant, so active and so long-suffering in toil as his was? For without doubt it was rendered beautiful by many a rare seed of virtues – living, natural ones I mean, not counterfeit. He was uniquely lacking in self-indulgence and so undemanding about food that Oppius tells how, one day, when he was served with some oil-of-physic in mistake for salad oil, he used it copiously so as not to embarrass his host. On another occasion he had his baker whipped for supplying him with other than coarse bread. Even Cato used to say that he was the first abstemious man to set out on a road which was, where his country was concerned, the road to ruin.

  Cato did call him a drunkard once:6 but that happened in this way: they were both in the Senate debating the conspiracy of Cataline when a sealed letter was brought to Caesar (who was suspected of being implicated in the conspiracy). Cato, concluding that it was some warning from the conspirators, summoned him to hand it over – which Caesar was forced to do to avoid further suspicion. It chanced to be a love letter which Cato’s sister Servilia had written to him. Cato read it and tossed it back to him saying, ‘Here, drunkard!’ That was a term of anger and contempt rather than an express accusation of drunkenness: we too often insult those who have irritated us with the first insults which come to our tongue, even though they may be in no wise deserved by those we apply them to. Added to which that vice which Cato accused him of is a wondrously close neighbour to the vice he had surprised in Caesar; as the proverb says, ‘Venus and Bacchus are readily found together.’7 [B] Though in my own case Venus is more lively when accompanied by abstinence.

  [A] Examples of his kindness and clemency towards those who had harmed him are numberless – I mean not counting those he provided during the period when the Civil Wars were still in progress: he himself makes us realize clearly in his writings that he exploited those cases to woo his opponents and make them less fearful of his victory and of his future dominance. Yet even if we must say that those particular examples do not suffice to prove to us his native clemency, they do at least show us in that great man a marvellous self-assurance and grandeur. It frequently happened that, once he had defeated them, he sent entire armies back to the enemy without even condescending to make them swear binding oaths that, even if they would not support him, they would at least refrain from making war on him. He captured certain of Pompey’s Captains three or four times, and as many times set them free again. Pompey declared that all those who were not his companions-in-arms were his enemies: Caesar had it proclaimed that all those who stayed put and did not actually take up arms against him were his friends. If his Captains sneaked away to seek other employment, Caesar sent them their arms, their horses and their equipment. The towns which he had captured by force of arms he left free to take whatever decision they liked, leaving no garrison behind save the memory of his kindness and clemency. On his great day of battle at Pharsalia he forbade anyone, except as an ultimate extremity, to lay hands on a Roman citizen.

  In my judgement you have there some very chancy strokes: no wonder that, in the Civil Wars which we know, those who attack the ancient constitution of their country have not imitated his example. They are abnormal methods which it behoved only Caesar’s good fortune and Caesar’s foresight to manage auspiciously. When I reflect on the incomparable greatness of his soul I can pardon Victory for not distancing herself from him even in a cause so unjust and so iniquitous.

  To come back to his clemency, we have many simple examples of it during the time of his ascendancy when, having everything under his thumb, he no longer needed to dissemble. Caius Memmius had written against him some very sharp criticisms to which he himself replied very sharply: that did not prevent him soon afterwards from helping to make him Consul. When Caius Calvus had composed several insulting epigrams about him and then enjoined his friends to bring about a reconciliation, Caesar decided to write to him first. Our excellent Catullus had given him some rough treatment, coupling his name with Mamurra’s: when he came to make apologies Caesar invited him to dinner that very day. When he had been informed that some were talking ill of him, all he did was to announce in one of his public speeches that he had been so informed. He feared his enemies even less than he hated them. When certain conspiracies and cabals were revealed to him, he was satisfied with an edict stating they were known to him, without further prosecuting those responsible. As for his concern for his friends, once had, when Caius Oppius was taken ill while travelling with him, he gave up the only available bed and slept out hard in the open. As for his justice, although no one had lodged any complaint, he had a slave whom he particularly liked put to death for lying with the matron of a Roman knight.

  Never was there man who showed more moderation in victory nor more resolution in adversity. Yet all these beautiful dispositions were stifled and corrupted by that frenzied passion of ambition by which he permitted himself to be so totally carried away that it is easy to show that it was the rudder which steered all his actions. It changed a generous man into a plunderer of the State to furnish the wherewithal for his profuse scattering of gifts; it brought him to make that base and iniquitous assertion that if the most wicked and abandoned men in the world had done him faithful service in his advancement to greatness he would cherish them and use his power to promote their interests just as he would in the case of the best of men; it made him so drunk with a vanity so extreme that he dared to boast in the presence of his fellow-citizens that he had stripped the great name of the Roman Republic of body and soul, and to declare that from thenceforth his replies must serve as laws; when the corps of the Senators came to greet him he dared to remain seated; he allowed himself to be worshipped as a god and that divine offices should be celebrated to him in his presence. To sum up, that one vice alone, in my judgement, undid the most beautiful and the most richly endowed nature there ever was, making his name abominable to all good men for having willed to seek his own glory from the destruction and overthrow of his country, the most powerful and flourishing commonwealth that the world will ever see.

  On the opposite side many examples of great public figures such as Mark Antony and so on could be found whose lust made them forget the conduct of affairs of state; but whenever sexual love and ambition were to be evenly balanced and come to blows with similar forces, I am in no doubt whatsoever that the former would win the advantage and dominate.

  Now to pick up my track again, It is a great thing to rein in our own appetites by reasoned argument or violently to compel our own members to keep to their duty: but to flog ourselves because of our concern for others, not merely ridding our own selves of that sweet passion which excites us and of the pleasure we feel when we find ourselves attractive to others and loved and courted by everyone, but to
loathe and abhor our very qualities which provoke such things, damning our own beauty because it arouses somebody else: well, I do not find many examples of that. But here is one of them.

  In Tuscany there was a youth called Spurina,

  [B] Qualis gemma micat, fulvum quæ dividit aurum,

  Aut collo decus aut capiti, vel quale, per artem

  Inclusum buxo aut Oricia terebintho,

  Lucet ebur.

  [like a jewel set in yellow gold fit for a necklace or diadem: shining ivory, inlaid in box-wood or wood from the terebinth trees of Illyria.]8

  [A] He was gifted with singular beauty, so extreme that the chastest of eyes could not chastely suffer its brilliance. He never found it sufficient merely not to encourage the flames of feverish passion which he everywhere set ablaze: he conceived a raging loathing for himself and for those rich gifts with which Nature had endowed him, as though the faults in others should be blamed on those gifts: so he slashed his face, deliberately disfiguring with the scars of his wounds that perfect disposition and proportion which Nature had so carefully followed in making it.9

  [C] To tell you how I judge that: such actions stun me rather than make me honour them; those extremes are inimical to my rules. His intentions were beautiful and loyal to his conscience, but in my judgement somewhat lacking in wisdom. What? Supposing his ugliness later served to provoke others to the sins of scorn, or of hatred and envy of his great repute, or of calumny – interpreting this humour of his as insane ambition? Is there any concept in which, if it wishes to, vice cannot find occasions for displaying itself one way or another? It would have been more just, and also more to his glory, if he had made those gifts of God into a means of exemplary virtue and orderly living.