The Complete Essays
Page 155
8. Suetonius, Life of Caesar, Herodotus, IV, xciv.
’80: address insults thus…
9. Plutarch, De la tranquillité de l’ame, 69G.
1. ’80: Nevertheless the Roman Senate, for whom only superior virtue was deemed a just means of gaining victory, found this trick ugly and dishonourable, not yet having tingling in their ears that fine saying… (The ‘fine saying’ is from Virgil, Aeneid, II, 390, cited by Justus Lipsius, Politici, V, as are Polybius and Florus.)
2. Ennius, in Cicero, De officiis, I, xii, 38.
3. Geronimo Osorio (da Fonseca) and others, Histoire du Portugal, tr. Simon Goulart (and sometimes attributed to him), Paris, 1587, XIV.
4. Cf. Giovanni Villani, Croniche dell’origine di Firenze, Venice, 1537, VI.
5. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, I; Lysander, XCI.
6. Martin Du Bellay, Mémoires, I, 22, on the siege of Mousson, and I, 29, on the siege of Reggio (cf. Guicciardini, Histoire d’Italie, 1568).
7. Plutarch, Life of Eumenes.
8. Jean Froissart, Croniques, I, ccix.
1. Cf. Livy, XXXVII, xxxii.
2. Plutarch, Les dicts notables des Lacedaemoniens, 217 H–218 A.
3. Livy, XXIV, xix; Cicero, De officiis, III, xvii; Xenophon, Cyropaedia.
4. Guicciardini, Histoire d’Italie, V, ii.
5. Montaigne confounds the sieges of Yvoy in the Ardennes with that of Dinan (1554).
6. Martin Du Bellay, Mémoires, II, and IX.
7. Ariosto, Orlando furioso, XV, 1.
8. Cicero, De officiis, III, x, 42.
9. Quintus Curtius (Rufus), IV, xiii.
10. Virgil, Aeneid, X, 752.
1. Martin Du Bellay, etc., Mémoires, I, 7.
’80: Henry expressly ordered…
2. Both were beheaded in 1568.
3. Herodotus, cited by Henri Estienne in his satire, L’Apologie pour Hérodote, XV.
1. The human egg not yet having been discovered, many believed with Galen that children were produced by an intermingling of a (weaker) female semen with the male’s. By itself the female semen could at times produce moles, a misshapen lump. (Montaigne found the idea developed in Plutarch’s Matrimonial Precepts, which La Boëtie translated, and which Montaigne published in 1571.)
2. Virgil, Aeneid, VIII, 22.
3. Horace, Ars poetica, 7.
4. Martial, VII, lxxiii.
5. Lucan, Pharsalia, IV, 704.
6. Montaigne’s terms are the technical ones of melancholy madness. Cf. for example Milton’s Ode to Melancholy, where the English equivalents occur.
1. [A] until [B]: reputation. I could tell some remarkable tales about that, but, for the while, it is better to keep to my subject. It is not for nothing…
Then Plato, Critias, 108D.
2. Montaigne probably means himself.
3. Cf. Cicero, Pro Ligurio; Herodotus, Hist.. V, cv.
4. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, IV, ii, 91; the saying had become proverbial.
5. Pedro Mexia also treats this topic: cf. his Diverses Leçons (in, ‘How we can tell lies’). His sources, like Montaigne’s, are Aulus Gellius and Nonus.
6. St Augustine, City of God, XIX, vii; Montaigne cites Pliny from J. L. Vives’ note on this passage.
7. The murder of Captain Merveille became an international cause célèbre. It is narrated in the Du Bellay Mémoires.
8. The original source of this account is the De Lingua of Erasmus. It is taken up by Henri Estienne in the Apologie pour Hérodote.
1. Etienne de La Boëtie, Vers françois, ed. Montaigne, Paris, 1572; sonnet XIV.
2. Pope Clement VII came to Marseilles to discuss heresy (and other matters) in 1533. Montaigne follows the account in the Du Bellay Mémoires.
3. Marcus Annaeus Seneca (the rhetorician, not the philosopher), Controversies, III.
4. Horace, Epistles, I, xix, 6 (cf. Erasmus, Adages, IV, III, LVIII: ‘Non est dithyrambus qui bibit aquam.’)
5. Cf. Montaigne’s dedication of his translation of Raymond Sebond to his father (given in the Appendix to the Introduction, p. lvii).
1. Cicero, De divinatione, II, lvii, 117; De natura deorum, II, lxiv, 160–1; lxv, 162 f. The theme is prominent in Plutarch’s treatise on the cessation of oracles. There was a renewed interest in classical forms of prognostication during the Renaissance. (Cf. Rabelais, Le Tiers Livre, TLF, XXV.) Montaigne criticizes Plato’s belief in divination from entrails in II, 12.
2. Cf. Robert Garnier, Les Juifves, final line: Christ ‘Will come, to put an end to all prophecy’.
3. Lucan, Pharsalia, II, 4–6; 14–15.
4. Cicero, De nat. deorum, III, vi, 14.
5. The Du Bellay Mémoires relate this. For the context, cf. Rabelais, Pantagruéline Prognostication, TLF, Droz, 1974, pp. xviii-xxii.
6. Horace, Odes, III, xxix, 29–32; 41–44; then II, xvi, 25.
7. Cicero, De divinatione, I, vi, 10; then I, lvii, 131, citing Pacuvius.
8. Cicero, De divinatione, II, xxiii, 50–1.
9. A serious possibility, especially for students of Renaissance law; cf. Rabelais, Tiers Livre, TLF, XLIII-XLIIII.
10. Plato, Republic, V.
11. Cicero, De divinatione, II, lix, 121.
12. Cicero, De natura deorum, III, xxxvii, 89; De divinatione, I, iii, 5.
13. ’88: wrong. I have seen…
14. Joachim of Flora died about 1202. His Prophecies were in print (there is an edition, Venice 1589), but legends had attached to his name. The Emperor Leo’s book is known only at second-hand.
15. ’88: The daemon of Socrates was, in my opinion, a certain thrust…
(Socrates had a daemon, a good spirit, who enabled him to avoid error. Renaissance thinkers took this very seriously: Rabelais gives Pantagruel a similar daemon: Quart Livre, TLF, LXVI. Cf. Plato’s Apology for Socrates and Plutarch’s Du Demon de Socrate.)
16. ’88: albeit fortuitous were always good and worthy to be followed. Everyone has in himself some ghost of such agitations. I have had some by which…
17. For some Renaissance thinkers Socrates’ ecstasies made him into a forerunner of St Paul. Montaigne considered Socrates’ ecstasies to be natural in origin and so quite unlike St Paul’s privileged rapture. This became a standard opinion.
1. [A] until [C]: patiently and firm-footedly bearing…
2. Plato, Laches, 190B-191D.
3. Herodotus, Hist., IV, cxxvii.
4. The invasion was in 1536. Cf. Du Bellay, Mémoires, VII, p. 129.
5. Francesco Guicciardini, Historia d’Italia, XIII, ii.
6. All [C] here from St Augustine, City of God, IX, iv (following Aulus Gellius and citing Virgil, Aeneid, IV, 449).
1. Cf. I, 10, note 2.
2. In 1532. (Francesco Guicciardini makes similar remarks about their meeting in 1529.)
1. A saying of Epictetus, collected by Stobaeus in his Apophthegms and inscribed by Montaigne in his library.
2. Aristotle considers death as something to be most dreaded: the Stoics believe that (since any man can take his own life) it is the ultimate means of escaping pain, disgrace, defeat or other evils. Montaigne’s ideas here are influenced by Seneca.
3. ’80: Others, do they not welcome it with quite different countenance? One…
4. [B] Until [C]: too cheap and available…
The following verse: Lucan, Pharsalia, IV, 580.
5. Cicero, Tusc. disput., V, xl, 117.
6. [A] until [C]: common ordinary people…
7. Series of jests straight from Henri Estienne, Apologie pour Herodote, 1566, p. 175.
8. Jean Bouchet, Annales d’Acquitaine.
9. Simon Goulart, Hist. du Portugal, Paris, 1587, IV, ii.
10. Bonaventure Des Périers, Nouvelles récréations et joyeux devis; end of the first nouvelle.
11. Plutarch, Brutus.
12. Jeronimo Osorio (da Fonseca), Historia de rebus Emmanuelis Lusitanae regis virtute gestis, Cologne, 1574, pp.6r° and 13r°. (Montaigne was himself de
scended from Iberian Jews.)
From 1595 onwards, this chapter became I, 40.
[’95]; as any other. In the town of Castelnaudary fifty Albigensian heretics all suffered themselves to be burned together, with resolute hearts, in one fire, rather than to disown their opinions… Cicero says…
13. Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, xxxvii.
14. Perhaps Seneca, whose Epistle LXX is devoted to suicide and makes similar points.
15. A frequently cited example going back to Diogenes Laertius’ Life of Pyrrho.
16. Cicero, Tusc. disput., II, vi, 15.
17. ’80: sovereign evil…
18. Cicero, Tusc. disput., II, XXV, 61.
19. Lucretius, IV, 485.
20. Etienne de La Boëtie, Poèmes, ed. Montaigne, p. 233; addressed to Montaigne.
21. Ovid, Heroïdes; ‘Epistle of Ariana to Theseus’, 82;
[A]: what the sages chiefly fear…
22. St Augustine, City of God, I, ii (adapted).
23. ’80: and fear it…
[A] was written before the onset of Montaigne’s colic paroxysms.)
24. Seneca, De providentia, VI.
25. Cicero, De finibus, II, xx, 65–6.
26. Lucan, Pharsalia, IX, 404.
27. Cicero, De finibus, II, xxix, 95, translated in the text before quotation.
28. Seneca, Epist. moral., LXXVIII, 17.
29. Cicero, De finibus, I, xv, 49.
30. ’80: happiness in the soul and to have too much commerce with the body. Just as…
(Cf. Seneca, Epist. moral., LXXVIII. In. [C], cf. Plato, Phaedo, 66B ff.
31. St Augustine, City of God, I, x (adapted).
32. Esdras 13:8; John 16:21.
33. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, De l’amour, XXXIV, p. 613C.
34. ’80: fox (for theft was a virtuous deed for them, but with the proviso that it was more disgraceful to be caught than it is with us): he stuffed…
35. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Life of Lycurgus, xiv; Cicero, Tusc. disput., V, xxvii, 77. (Theme taken up again in the Essays, I, 23.)
36. Cf. Seneca, Ep. moral., XXIV, 5.
37. Seneca, Ep. moral., LXXVIII, 18–19.
38. Aulus Gellius, XII, xvii, 41.
39. Cicero, Tusc. disput., II, xvii, 41.
40. Tibullus, I, viii, 45–6 (adapted).
41. Written before the death of Henry II of France in 1589; he was King of Poland in 1573 and 1574.
42. Guillaume Postel, Des Histoires Orientales, Paris, 1575, p. 228. The girl mentioned above is further situated in [’95] and could well be Mlle de Gournay.
[’95]: apart from which, when I came to those famous Estates meeting at Blois, I had seen a girl beforehand in Picardy who, to prove…
43. This is confirmed by Joinville, Histoire et cronique du Roy S. Loys, XCIV.
44. Jean Bouchet, Annales d’Acquitaine, Poitiers, 1557, p. 75r°
45. Foulke III, who died in 1040.
46. Montaigne’s diary suggests this was his friend the Comte de Foix, whose three sons were killed near Agen, 29 July 1587.
[’95]: as a special blessing from heaven. I do not follow such monstrous humours but I myself…
47. Cicero, Tusc. disput., III, xxviii, 71.
48. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Dicts notables des anciens Roys, princes et capitaines, p. 189D.
49. Livy, XXXIV, xvii.
50. Montaigne is alluding to ascetic anchorites.
51. Among those who had gelded themselves was Origen. Montaigne believed that Democritus had blinded himself (cf. I, 29; II, 12). Textor cites this after Lucretius in his Officina (s.v. Caeci et Excaecati).
52. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Thales, I, xxvi, 28.
53. Aristippus. Cf. Horace, Satires, II, iii, 99–110.
54. Seneca, Ep. moral., XVII, 11.
55. Plutarch, Life of Julius Caesar.
56. Catullus, IV, 18.
57. ’88: right beside me. Fortune can make… (Sors replacing Fortune)
58. Publius Syrus, cited by Justus Lipsius, Politici, V, xviii.
59. Sallust, De republica, I, 1; cited there as from Appuleius.
60. Seneca, Epist. moral., LXXIV, 4 (adapted).
61. ’88: stage, I did have goods. Becoming so hotly attached to them, I…
62. Seneca, De Tranquillitate animi, VIII.
63. Plato, Laws, I, 1, 631B–D.
64. Or rather, the Elder Dionysius: Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Les dictz notables des anciens Roys, Princes, et grands capitaines, p. 190E–F.
65. ’80: for four or five years: some good Fortune or other cast me out…
66. Cicero, Paradoxa, VI, iii, 49.
67. Until [C]: a vice, which I have always held to be the least excusable and the most ridiculous…
68. Cf. Xenophon, Cyropaedia, VIII, iii, 40.
69. Perhaps Prevost de Sansac, Archbishop of Bordeaux, a contemporary of Montaigne’s.
70. Cf. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Du vice et de la vertu, I, 38B.
71. Themes developed in ‘An apology for Raymond Sebond’ (II, 12): cf. the bent oar. Here Montaigne is translating from Seneca, Epist. moral., LXXI, 23–6.
72. Cicero, Tusc. disput., II, xxii, 52.
73. Seneca, Epist. moral., XII, 10: the great Stoic commonplace making suicide the ultimate recourse of the wise man.
Until [C]: constrained to pay us with the following: ‘Living…
1. Several borrowings from the Du Bellay Mémoires, (II, 61 and VIII, 267).
2. Until [C]: Eastern potentates, the Tamberlanes, Mahomets and their…
3. Simon Goulart, Histoire du Portugal, XIV, xv.
1. Until [C] the misprint peu de gens (for prou de gens) made this read: few people (which inverts the sense).
2. Diodorus Siculus, Histoires (tr. Amyot), XII, ix.
3. Tertullian, cited by Justus Lipsius, Adversus dialogistam, III.
4. Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, XXIV, iv, and XXV, i.
5. The Du Bellay Mémoires, II, 52; VII, 217.
1. Verses derived from Propertius and translated in a recent Italian book of etiquette, Stefano Guazzo’s La civil conversatione, which had at least five editions between 1574 and 1600. Cf. note 6, below.
2. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Les Dicts notables des Lacedaemoniens, p. 215G.
3. Diodorus Siculus, XV, ii, p. 179r°; Horace, Epistles, I, xiv, 43.
4. Until [C]: always strive to lead…
5. Guillaume Du Bellay was the Seigneur de Langey. The Mémoires (often attributed to Martin Du Bellay) were the work of Guillaume, Jean, René and Martin Du Bellay. (Cf. here, Mémoires, pp. 152–6.)
6. Aulus Gellius, I, xiii, 24. These facts, and a similar discussion based on Aulus Gellius, occur in another famous book of court etiquette, Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, which was written for King Francis I of France.
1. Virgil, Aeneid, II, 774.
2. ’80: even among warriors where… (Many melancholics were prone to visions of chimeras and bugaboos).
3. ’80: was held by such terror… (Du Bellay, Mémoires, III, 75.)
4. Du Bellay, Mémoires, VIII, 255.
5. ’88: Such madness can sometimes take hold of entire armies; – [B] (until [C]): Allemani, fear being spread among their army, two… (Tacitus, Hist., I, lxiii.)
6. Quintus Curtius, III, ii. The general account is from Joannes Zonaras, Historia, III.
7. Livy, Annal., XXI, lvi.
8. Cicero: Tusc. disput., III, xxvii, 66. (The event figures in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.) Then ibid., IV, viii, 19, citing Ennius.
9. Diodorus Siculus, XV, vii.
10. Cf. Erasmus, Adages, III, VIII, III, Panicus casus; also Apophthegmata, V; Epaminondas, I.
1. Ovid, Metamorphoses, III, 135.
2. Cf. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VII; Solon Salaminius, III (citing Herodotus).
([A] until [C]): smile on them, how much treasure, how many Kingdoms and Empires might be seen in their hands, can never…
3. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Dicts notables des Laceda
emoniens, p. 211C.
4. Dionysius the Tyrant became a pedagogue.
5. Cf. Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, xxxv, 86.
6. Ludovico Sforza, ousted in 1500, spent eight years in the dungeon at Loches; Mary Stuart (widow of Francis II of France) was beheaded in 1587.
7. Lucretius, V, 1233. (The fasces and axes were Roman symbols of State.)
8. Macrobius, Saturnalia, II, vii.
9. [A] until [C]: honours, riches and powers…
10. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, V; Epaminondas, XXIII.
11. Lucretius, III, 57.
12. Seneca, Epist. moral., XXIV and XXVI, parts of which are translated and paraphrased at length in this chapter.