49. Cicero, De divinatione, I, xl, 87; Isocrates, Ad Nicoclem, IX, xxxiii.
50. ’88: position: one cannot change anything without judging whatever one abandons to be bad, and whatever one adopts to be good. God does know…
51. Theology.
52. Miracles are exceptions and make bad law. (For the consequence of such a conviction, cf. Montaigne on witchcraft, I, 21, ‘On the power of the imagination’.)
53. Cicero, De natura deorum, III, ii, 5.
54. Seneca (the tragedian), Oedipus, III, 686.
55. An echo of Terence applied politically. Cf. II, 19, ‘On freedom of conscience’, end.
56. Agesilaus: the first of a series of borrowings from the relevant Lives of Plutarch.
57. Alexander the Great, in Plutarch’s Life. When he was told that Macedonian custom forbade their armies to take to the field during June, he commanded June to be renamed The Second May.
58. Plutarch’s Lysander.
59. Plutarch’s Parallel Lives of Flaminius and Philopoemen.
1. François de Guise, born outside France (in Lorraine).
2. Catherine de’ Medici.
3. 1562.
4. The Reformed Church. Guise was. Roman Catholic.
5. Seneca, De clementia, I, ix. Montaigne doubtless savoured the fact that John Calvin had edited this text (Paris, 1532). It later provides the subject of Corneille’s tragedy, Cinna, ou la clémence d’Auguste.
6. François de Guise was assassinated in 1563.
7. The Platonic concept of poetic rapture widely accepted in Montaigne’s time, especially by the Pléiade. The main source is Plato’s dialogue, Io.
8. In Plutarch’s Life of Sylla.
9. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, V; Dion, I.
10. Plutarch, Life of Alexander.
11. Perhaps Henry III of France, but it could be Henry IV.
12. Perhaps Henry IV, but it could be Duc Henri de Guise.
13. Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus (Livy, XXVIII, 17). Syphax was a King of Numidia during the Second Punic War.
14. Livy, XXII, 22.
15. Louis XI, who, according to Commines, entrusted his life to Charles the Bold at Conflans.
16. Lucan, Pharsalia, V, 316–18.
17. Probably during the riots against the salt-tax in Bordeaux (1548), when the King’s representative was murdered.
18. The mob.
19. At Bordeaux, in 1585, when Montaigne was mayor. Some of the soldiers were thought to be disloyal.
20. After Suetonius’ Life of Twelve Caesars.
21. Plutarch, tr. Amyot: Dicts des anciens Roys, XXII.
22. Related by Giovanni Villani in his Historia di suoi tempi.
23. Appianus of Alexandria, De civilibus Romanorum bellis, widely read during the Civil Wars in the French translation of Claude de Seyssel.
1. A Sorbonne professor was addressed as Magister Noster (‘Our Master’), a title already mocked by Erasmus and in the Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum. Schoolmasters were often addressed as Magister by their pupils.
2. Joachim Du Bellay, Regrets – the ‘punchline’ of Sonnet LXVIII.
3. The Roman mob applied those terms to Cicero, according to Plutarch in his Life of Cicero. The words used were Graikos and scholastikos (which Xylander (863B) rendered as Graecus and otiosus, since in Latin otium means both leisure and learned study).
4. Dreadful Latin: cited by the jolly, ignorant Benedictine monk, Frère Jean, in Rabelais (Gargantua, TLF, XXXVII, 95).
5. Perhaps Catherine de Bourbon, sister of Henry of Navarre.
6. A great many changes in [C]. [A] reads: I would like to suggest that our minds are swamped by too much study, just as plants are swamped by too much water: that our minds, seized and encumbered by so many diverse preoccupations…; also: the best scholars…
7. Socrates, for example, was mocked by Aristophanes. The rest of the paragraph paraphrases Plato’s Theaetetus, XXIV, 173–5 in which the speaker is Socrates.
8. Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, XIII, viii.
9. Archimedes (in Plutarch’s Life of Marcellus, Xylander, 307B–D).
10. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VII, Crates Thebanus Cynicus, XIII, and Heraclitus Ephesus, XV.
11. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Empedocles; Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VII, Milesii Thaletis, XIX, after Cicero, De divinatione, I, xlix.
12. Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics, VI, vii, 5.
13. Seneca, Epist. moral., LXXXVIII, 39, where he values training in virtue well above the liberal and the useful arts.
14. Cicero, Tusc. disput., V, xxxvi, 103 (adapted); Seneca, Epist. moral., CVIII, 37.
15. Seneca, Epist. moral., XXXIII, 7 (adapted).
16. The millionaire Calvisius Sabinus, in Seneca, Epist. moral., XXVII, 5–6.
17. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Comment il faut ouīr, p. 30H.
18. Cicero, Academica, II, i.2. Lucius Lucullus, a tiro in military matters, was dispatched against Mithridates, read up history on the way, and became an outstanding general.
19. Euripides (translated by Montaigne in [B] but not in [C]). From John Stobaeus, III, De Prudentia: Sententiae monostichae.
20. Cicero, De officiis, X, III, xiv, 62; Juvenal, VIII, xiv; Cicero, De finibus, I, i, 3.
21. Not Dionysius but Diogenes: Erasmus, Apophthegmata, III, Diogenes Cynicus, XVI.
22. Plato, Meno, XXVIII, 91.
23. Plato, Protagoras, XVI, 328.
24. Persius, Satires, I, lxi.
25. Adrian Turnebus, for Montaigne, was the scholar ‘who knew everything’, even though he might not be elegant after the style of Castiglione’s famous Book of the Courtier. Cf. II, 12, ‘An apology for Raymond Sebond’.
26. Juvenal, Satires, XIV, 35. (Here Titan means Prometheus, the grandson of Titan. He fashioned men from clay and gave them souls made from fire stolen from the heavens.)
27. John Stobaeus, Sententiae, III, De Prudentia: Sententiae monostichae. Translated in the text.
28. Seneca, Epist. moral., CVI, 12.
29. Seneca, Epist. moral., XXXVI, 3–4.
30. Cicero, Tusc. disput., II, iv, 12.
31. Known from Gilles Corrozet, Propos memorables de nobles hommes de la chrestienté.
32. Seneca, Epist. moral., XCV, 13.
33. Plato, Republic, III, 415A.
34. Cicero, De natura deorum, III, xxxi, 77.
35. In his Cyropaedia. Cf. John Stobaeus, Sermo LXXXIV, 30 f.
36. Plato, Alcibiades, I; John Stobaeus, Sermo LXXXIV, 10–20.
37. Xenophon, Cyropaedia, I, iii, 15.
38. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Dicts notables des Lacedaemoniens, 212F.
39. Ibid., 225A.
40. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, I, Agesilaus, XLIX.
41. Plato, Hippias Major, 285; John Stobaeus, De justitia, sermo IX.
42. Several of the above examples are given in the anonymous Tesoro politico and appear to have been well-known at least afterwards.
1. ’80: how crooked-back or lame he may be…
2. [A] until [C]: study of Plato or Aristotle… (A significant deletion).
3. Modernists (often a pejorative term, as in Spiegel’s Lexicon Juris Civilis) was applied to Nominalists – neo-Aristotelians who refused to seek philosophical truths in revelation, restricting revealed truth to Christian theology.
4. [A] until [C]: any solid field…
5. Celio Calcagnini stressed that the young can be knowledgeable about ‘universals’ but not about ‘particulars’, which depend on experience. Cf. also Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics, VI, 8, 5–8.
6. Those daughters of Danaus who killed their husbands and were condemned to fill a leaky jar with water in Hades.
7. [A] until [C]: made, where books are concerned, for history, or poetry…
Then, Cleanthes in Seneca, Epist. moral., CVIII, 10.
8. ’80: comparisons; for otherwise I would have given birth to monstrosities, as do those rash authors…
9. ’80: credit by their theft achieve…
1
0. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Chrysippus and Life of Epicurus.
11. ’80: If I used such rich paintings as make-up for a chapter of mine that would reveal…
12. A cento was a literary poem, entirely, and often ingeniously, composed of lines from other authors and made to apply to a different subject. Lelio Capilupi’s cento was I work on monks, entirely composed of lines of Virgil. Justus Lipsius, an author much admired by Montaigne, who knew his Politics well and borrowed much from it, did not write centos but did at times make his works into a patchwork of borrowings from ancient writers, especially the Stoics.
13. Cimon and Mnesiphilus Themistocles were, as young men, ‘debauched and dissolute’, then they reformed: Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Si l’homme sage doit entremettre et mesler des affaires publiques, 186v°.
14. Gaston III, (‘Phoebus’) Comte de Foix (†1391) wrote a famous book on hunting. It was published in Paris c. 1510. François de Candale, Bishop of Aire, translated Hermes Trismegistus and Euclid in 1578–9.
15. [A] until [C]: book-learning and instruction, not…
16. For the importance of things not words, cf. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, III, Socratica, LXXXIII; then, Cicero, De natura deorum, I, v, 10.
17. ’80: given. They are only seeking a reputation for erudition. When they can say ‘He’s a learned man’, they think they have said it all. Their souls…
18. Seneca, Epist. moral., XXXIII, 10.
19. Known from Montaigne’s Journal de Voyage to be Dr Girolamo Borro, released from the prisons of the Inquisition on Papal authority. He wrote important books on motion and on the tides.
20. Dante, Inferno, XI, 93.
21. Seneca, Epist. moral., XXXIII, 4 (adapted). Romans hated kings: here Seneca virtually means, ‘We are under no despot.’
22. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De la Fortune ou vertu d’Alexandre, 313E (cf. Quels animaux, 508H).
23. Horace, Odes, III, ii, 5.
24. Cf. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VII, Plato, XVII.
25. Cicero, Tusc. disput., II, xv, 36.
26. Seneca, Epist. moral., CIII, 5.
27. Cicero, De officiis, I, x1i, 148.
28. Cicero, Academica, II (Lucullus), iii, 8 (adapted).
29. Propertius, IV, iii, 39–40.
30. Plato, Greater Hippias (beginning).
31. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De la mauvaise honte, 79B. La Boëtie’s book circulated under the title of Contr’un (Against [the rule of] One) after his death and was used as Protestant propaganda against the French King.
32. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Dicts notables des Lacedaemoniens, 214F.
33. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Du bannissement, ou de l’exil, 125D–E.
34. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VII, Pythagoras VII (from Cicero, Tusc. disput., V, iii, 9).
35. Persius, Satires, III, 69–73.
36. Virgil, Aeneid, III, 459.
37. Horace, Epistles, I, ii, 40–3.
38. Propertius, IV, i, 85–6.
39. In Ptolomaic astronomy, the Eighth Sphere contained the fixed stars (Anacreon, Odes, XVII, x).
40. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Anaximenes.
41. Author of a fifteenth-century Greek grammar.
42. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Des oracles qui ont cessé, 338A.
43. Juvenal, Satires, IX, 1879.
44. Mnemonics representing by their vowels: i) the fourth mood of the Second figure of syllogisms; ii) the first indirect mood of the Second figure of syllogisms. (Here used to mock dry scholastic logic.)
45. ’80: reasons gross, manageable and palpable. Since Philosophy…
46. In the myth of Hesiod, Virtue dwells on a fair plateau reached by a rugged and toilsome path. Cf. I, 20, ‘To philosophize is to learn how to die’; note 7. (Seneca denied it, De ira, III, xiii.)
47. Venus, the goddess of love; Pallas, of wisdom.
48. Heroines in Ariosto’s Orlando furioso.
49. Virgil, Aeneid, VII, 363: Paris who, in his famous judgement between Aphrodite, Hera and Athene, chose the more dainty and artificial Aphrodite (Venus). Montaigne opts for Bradamante.
50. This passage is toned down in [’95]. Cf. Plato, Republic, 415 BC; then, Persius, Satires, III, 23–4.
51. According to Seneca, Epist. moral., XLIX, 5.
52. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De la fortune ou vertu d’Alexandre, 308GH.
53. Persius, Satires, V, 64–5.
54. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Epicurus.
55. [A] until [C]: boy in a college. I do not…
56. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Carneades.
57. The Romans said this of the French (the Gauls’) fighting-power (Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VI, varie mixta, CIII).
58. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Premier livre des Propos de Table, 359F.
59. Plato’s Symposium in French, and sometimes in English, is known as the Banquet: its theme is the nature of love. Then Plutarch, ibid., 360E.
60. Horace, Epistles, I, i, 25–6.
61. [A] until [C]: usually is in colleges, where instead… (Cf. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Regles et Preceptes de Santé, 302B.)
62. Quintilian, Institutio, I, iii, 13–16. Dismissing Chrysippus’ belief in the value of flogging, Quintilian held that it can produce mental depression.
63. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Speucippus.
64. Plato, Laws, VII; then, for Demophon, Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xiv, and for Germanicus, Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De l’envie et la haine, 108A.
65. Seneca, Epist. moral., XC, 46.
66. Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades.
67. Horace, Epistles, I, xvii, 23, 25, 26, 29.
68. ’80: lessons, in which doing goes with saying. For what is the use of preaching at his mind if deeds do not go along with it? You will see from what he undertakes whether there is any wisdom there: if there is any goodness in his actions, if he is indifferent…
69. Plato, The Lovers (Erastai) 137AB (which shows Socrates discussing the nature of philosophy with schoolboys).
70. Cicero, Tusc. disput., IV, iii, 5.
71. Cicero, ibid., IV, iii, 8; then, Diogenes Laertius, Life of Diogenes.
72. Cicero, Tusc. disput., II, iv, 11.
73. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Dicts notables des Lacedaemoniens, 217A.
’80: deeds not writings. After…
74. Like bears, the offspring of which were thought to be born without form but ‘licked into shape’ by their parents.
75. Bergamask – the dialect of Bergamo (in Venice). The inhabitants and their language were considered rustic and uncouth. (In the context of imagery drawn from childbirth there is possibly also a play on boucler à la bergamasque, to shut up one’s wife in a chastity-belt.)
76. Horace, Ars poetica, 311.
77. Marcus Annaeus Seneca, Controversiae, III.
78. Cicero, De finibus, III, v. 19.
79. Petit-Pont – the ‘Billingsgate’ of Paris.
80. A captatio benevolentiae is a literary device designed to catch the reader’s sympathetic attention. It was taught as part of rhetoric and dialectic.
81. [A]: unable to appreciate heavier…
Tacitus, Dialogus an sui saeculi oratores antiquioribus concedant, XIX.
82. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Dicts notables des Lacedaemoniens, 218B.
83. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Instructions pour ceux qui manient les affaires d’Estat, 163F.
84. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, V, Cato Uticensis, III.
85. Horace, Satires, I, iv, 8; 58–60.
86. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Si les Atheniens ont esté plus excellents en armes qu’en lettres, 525DE.
87. Seneca, Epistles, XL, 5.
88. Both from Diogenes Laertius, Life of Aristippus. (Cf. also Erasmus, Apophthegmata, III, Aristippus, XIII.)
89. Cicero, Academica, II (Lucullus), xxiv, 75.
90. Quintilian, Institutiones oratoriae, VIII, iii, 30 (adapted); then, Seneca, Epist. moral., LIX, 5.
91. From the Epitaph of Lucan (the poet of the Pharsalia).
92. A very perspicacious judgement.
Suetonius’ alleged remark arises from a poor manuscript reading of a passage in his Life of Caesar which is corrected in modern editions but was accepted during the Renaissance.
[B] until [C]: Julius Caesar’s. Let us boldly hold against him what was held against Seneca: his style was quick-lime, but without the sand. I like to…
93. ’88: clothes, letting themselves be taken for German mercenaries, wearing a cape and with a stocking…
94. Seneca, Epist. moral., XL, 4 (on the style fit for a philosopher).
The Complete Essays Page 157
