The Complete Essays
Page 162
3. Seneca, Epist. moral., XIII, 3.
4. Epaminondas was a Pythagorean; Socrates’ wife Xanthippe was, for Plato, the archetypal shrew.
5. Plutarch, Life of Marius.
6. As in the myth of Hesiod, Works and Days, 289 f.
7. Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, xxx, 74.
8. Julius Caesar; defeated by him at Pharsalia, Cato killed himself later at Utica.
9. Horace, Odes, I, xxxvii, 29.
10. Cicero, De officiis, I, xxxi, 112.
11. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, III, Aristippus, XXXV.
12. Virgil, Aeneid, XI, 154–5.
13. Horace, Satires, I, vi, 65–7.
14. Horace, Odes, II, xvii, 13–16. (To be born under the equable Balance, Libra, was to be learned and judicious: cf. Manilius, Astronomica, IV, 202 ff.)
15. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VII; Antisthenes Atheniensis, XXVII.
16. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, III; Aristippus, III and XXXVII.
17. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Epicurus.
18. Juvenal, Satires, VIII, 164–5.
19. For Stoics the virtues are individually impossible without all the others. Cf. Cicero, De finibus, IV, xxviii, 77 ff. Augustine, Catalogus hereseon considers that this doctrine favours the Jovinian heresy.
20. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Aristotle.
21. Zopyrus the Physiognomist judged from Socrates’ features that he was lecherous and a dullard. Socrates agreed: he was born such, but had ‘reformed’ his soul: see Erasmus, Apophthegmata, III; Socratica, LXXX; and Cicero, De fato, V, 10 for both Socrates and Stilpo.
22. Lucretius, IV, 1099–10.
23. Margaret of Navarre, Heptaméron, IIIeJournée, conte 30; she states that St Ambrose had to forbid such tests of virtue.
24. ’80: I think a more appropriate comparison would be with hunting, in which there seems to be more rapture: not in my opinion that the pleasure in itself is greater but because it affords us no leisure to brace and prepare ourselves against it, and that it surprises us when…
25. ’80: The shock of this pleasure strikes us so furiously that it would be difficult for those who love the hunt to bring their soul at this point back from its rapture. Love gives way to the pleasure of the chase, say the poets: that is why they make Diana…
26. Horace, Epodes, II, 37–8.
27. The author is Suetonius (Life of Julius Caesar). Related by Erasmus, Apophthegmata, IV; Julius Caesar, I.
28. The text of the Bordeaux manuscript addition is partly damaged, but clearly tells of the same event in much the same words. Here [’95] replaces [C] as being more reliable.
29. Luke 12:4. (Christ’s own words, but cited inexactly from memory).
30. Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, xliv, 106 (citing Ennius)
31. Described in Montaigne’s Journal de Voyage.
32. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, V, Artoxerxes, XVIII. (Similarly cited in Amyot’s Plutarch, but as Artaxerxes).
33. Herodotus, History, II, xlvii.
34. Seneca, Epist. moral., XC, 45.
35. Virgil, Aeneid, VII, 501.
36. Erasmus, Adages, I, I, II, Amicitia aequalis; section Pythagorae Symbolae: A pisces abstineto; then, Ovid, Metamorphoses, XV, 106–7.
37. ’80: sympathy and love [amitié] which I confess that I feel for them…
An echo of the Pythagorean adage of Erasmus, Amicitia aequalis (see note 36).
38. The Druids were the priests and philosophers of the Ancient Gauls: Caesar, Gallic Wars, V, xiii ff.
39. Ovid, Metamorphoses, XV, 106–7. The Egyptian origin of metempsychosis is mentioned by Ovid’s commentators (e.g., among many, the Venice edition, 1586, p. 295).
40. [A]: body more vile, or less so…
41. Claudius Claudianus, In Ruffinum, II, 482–7.
42. Ovid, Metamorphoses, XV, 160–1 – from the verses which sympathetically expound Pythagoras’ ideas.
43. Such ‘cousinship’ is briefly mentioned by Brassicanus in his remarks on Pythagoras’ adage Ab animalibus abstine, with an allusion to Ovid’s ‘truly golden’ verses in the Metamorphoses, XV, which, throughout the Renaissance, is the source always cited or followed.
44. Cicero, De nat. deorum, I, xxxvi, 101.
45. Juvenal, Satires, XV, 2–6.
46. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De Isis et Osiris, 333F–334H.
47. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Les demandes des choses Romaines, 475E. The geese heard the Barbarians scaling the walls while the guard-dogs slept (Quels animaux sont les plus advisez, 514 D-E).
48. The Hecatompedon (‘the Hundred-feet long’) was the regular name for the Parthenon (the temple of Athena Parthenos in the citadel of Athens). It was rebuilt by Pericles on the site of a previous temple of that name.
49. Same examples in Ravisius Textor, Officina (Bruta animalia honorata sepulchris out statuis).
50. Plutarch, Life of Cato.
1. Commonplace; cf. Cicero, De fin., II. xiii. 43; Erillus, though a pupil of Zeno the Stoic, was close to Plato (Cicero, Acad., II. xlii. 129).
2. The Platonic contention. Cf. Socrates in Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics, VII, i. 6–ii, 7 (a commonplace: cf. Cognatus’ Adages, Indocto nihil iniquius and Nil scientia potentius); vulgarized by Erasmus’ Apophthegmata (Socrates, XXXIII): ‘He said knowledge is the only good, ignorance the only evil.’ The intemperate, say, believe inordinate reactions to be ordinate. ‘The summum bonum is therefore knowledge of what is to be sought or avoided.’
3. A distinguished scholar and tutor from Toulouse (1499–1546). Similar praise in Lambin’s dedication to him of Lucretius, De nat. rerum, V.
4. ’88: ordinary people (and virtually everybody is in that category) lack…
5. Lucretius, V, 1140 (alluding to regicide).
6. ’88: a difficult undertaking.
7. ’88: death, with the carelessness which you can see from the infinite number of misprints left in by the printer, who alone was responsible for its execution…Montaigne struck out his first printer’s liminary material for the second edition.
8. He is also highly praised by Montaigne in I, 25, ‘On schoolmasters’ learning’, and II, 17, ‘On presumption’.
9. ’88: his sacrosanct goodness…
10. A ‘lively’ faith shows itself in good works; Christian ‘mysteries’ are not accessible to unaided human reason: that is standard orthodox doctrine.
11. Anon. The poem (based on Aeneid, VII, 587 ff.) praises the staunchly Catholic Ronsard and accompanies his reply to Protestant critics, Response aux injures et calomnies, 1563.
12. Guillaume Postel, the French orientalist, highly praised the fervour of Moslem believers. He believed that, once converted, they would be the most exemplary of Christians.
13. Cf. Joinville, Histoire, XIX.
14. Boccaccio, Decameron, day I, tale 2.
15. Matthew 17:20.
16. Quintilian, XII, 11, 12 – enjoining men to will to achieve natural virtue.
17. ’88: to men. Men take…
18. J.-A. de Thou in his Historia sui temporis relates how Montaigne made similar remarks to him directly.
19. Many Roman Catholics and Protestants switched positions as their rival candidates drew near to the throne. The Catholic Henry III, assassinated 2 August 1589, was succeeded by the Protestant Henry IV, who became a Roman Catholic in 1593.
20. ’88: from our armies those…
21. Historical faith (by which one believes historical facts) is a low form of faith, quite insufficient for salvation; Montaigne’s contemporaries fail (he suggests) even to have that.
22. Diogenes Lacrtius, Lives (VI, 4 and 39), a major source of Montaigne’s knowledge of scepticism. (Both anecdotes in Erasmus’ Apophthegmata.)
’95: like you who does nothing worthwhile?…
23. Lucretius, III, 612 f. (Lambin, 1563, p. 230), alludes to the De divino praemio, VII, of the Christian writer Lactantius for an answer to these words. Montaigne provides an answer in his own way.
24. Paul (Philippians 1:23) becomes an a
nswer to Lucretius. For the highly orthodox association of Paul with Platonizing suicides, see my study, Montaigne and Melancholy, chapter 5, § 1.
25. ’88: pressing danger, extreme pain or closeness of death do not… Idea taken possibly from Plato, Laws, X (cf. Montaigne in I, 56, ‘On prayer’) and Plato, tr, Ficino, Republic, I, 330, 532.
26. Plato, Republic (Ficino, III, 391; cf. II, 379).
27. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Bion.
28. Cf. Erasmus, In Praise of Folly, LXVI.
29. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, De la tranquillité de l’âme, I, 76; Romans I:20; cf. Introduction, p. xxvii.
30. Manilius, IV, 907;
’88 (after quotation, referring to his translation of Sebond): If my printer were so enamoured of those studied, borrowed prefatory-pieces with which (according to the humour of this age) there is no book from a good publishing-house but has its forehead garnished, he should make use of verses such as these, which are of a better and more ancient stock than the ones he has planted there.
31. Horace, Epistles, V, 6.
32. ’88: malicious. Anyone who is already imbued with a belief more readily accepts arguments which support it than does a man who has drunk draughts from a contrary opinion, as do these people here. Some mental predisposition makes Sebond’s reasons…
’95: opinions. For an Atheist all writings lean towards atheism. He infects harmless matter…
33. Herodotus, VII, 10, apud John Stobaeus, Apophthegmata, 22. This was inscribed by Montaigne on a beam in his library.
34. I Peter: 5. Cf. Augustine, City of God, XVII, 4; Plato, tr. Ficino, Timaeus, 1546, p. 715.
35. City of God, XXI, 5.
36. Colossians 2:8; I Corinthians 3:19; I Corinthians 8:2; Galatians 6:3 (the last two inscribed in Montaigne’s library). For Montaigne, the Bible is the Holy Ghost speaking through men.
37. From here to the last page, revealed wisdom is left aside. See Introduction, p. xxv ff.
38. Cicero, De nat. deorum, I, ix, 23.
39. Ibid., II, liii, 133 (where the idea is attributed to Balbus the Stoic).
40. Lucretius, V, 1203 f.
41. Manilius, III, 58 (Montaigne mistranscribed Fata (fate) as facta (deeds). Fata makes better sense); then, I, 60–63; I, 55 and IV, 93; IV, 79 and 118.
42. Cicero, De nat. deorum, I, viii, 19.
43. Ibid., I, xxxi, 87 and 88 (refuting Epicurus).
44. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, De la face qui apparoist dedans le rond de la Lune; Diogenes Laertius, II, viii, 100; Seneca, De ira, II, ix; Wisdom of Solomon 9:15, apud Augustine, City of God, XII, 15.
45. ’88: moreover, says Pliny, the most given… (This quotation is used by Montaigne to conclude II, 14, ‘How our mind tangled itself up’; it was cited in Montaigne’s library.)
46. ’95: her? We entertain ourselves with mutual monkey-tricks. If I have times when I want to begin or to say no, so does she.
47. Plato, tr. Ficino, Politics, p. 206; Timaeus, p. 274 (cf. Montaigne in I, 11, ‘On prognostications’).
48. Benedetto Varchi, L’Hercolano. Dialogo nel qual si ragiona… delle lingue; Richerius Rhodiginus, Antiquae Lectiones XVII, xiii (disapprovingly); Pliny, Hist. nat., VI, xxxv, etc.
49. Lucretius, V, 1058.
50. Ibid., V, 1029.
51. ’88: by means of gestures. I have… (Cf. Rabelais, Tiers Livre, TLF, XIX–XX and notes.)
52. Torquato Tasso, Aminta, II, 34.
53. Quintilian, XI, iii, 66, 85–7; 68, 71–2; 78–86. Laughter and/or speech were normally considered the ‘specific characteristic’ (the ‘property’) of Man.
54. Pliny, VI, 30; cf. Rabelais, Pantagruel, TLF, XIII; Tiers Livre, XXX; J.-B. della Porta, De furtivis litterarum notis, 1563; etc.
55. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Les Dicts notables des Lacedaemoniens, I, 214 A.
56. Virgil, Georgics, IV, 219 f. For what follows, cf. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Quels sont les animaux les plus advisez ceulx de la terre ou ceulx des eaux? 512 CD.
57. ’88: over our invention and our arts…
58. ’88: so monstrous a constitution…
59. Commonplace deriving from Pliny, VII. Erasmus exploited it (Adage, Dulce bellum inexpertis); Rabelais satirized it (Tiers Livre, TLF, VIII).
60. Lucretius, V. 223; cf. Lambin, 389.
61. ’88: this world: our feebleness at birth is found, more or less, at the birth of the other creatures. Our skin…
62. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Lives, Lycurgus, XIII.
63. Lucretius, V, 1032.
64. Ibid., II, 1157.
65. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Quels animaux?, 512 CD.
66. Commonplace; for Herodotus, II, 2, Phrygian is Man’s natural language. Principal sources: Aristotle, Hist. animal., IV, ix; Varchi, L’Hercolano (citing Dante, Purgatorio, XXXVI, 34) and L. Joubert, Erreurs populaires au faict de la médecine, 1578, ad fin., (Lucretius, V. 1077, cited directly, and according to Lactantius, Div. institut., III). Same scepticism, Rabelais, Tiers Livre, XIX. If some animals can laugh, then laughter is not the ‘property’ of Man.
67. Already cited by Montaigne in I, 36 (‘On the custom of wearing clothing’); inscribed in Montaigne’s library and attributed to ‘Eccl. IX’.
68. Lucretius, V, 874; 921 (Lambin, pp. 430–4).
69. ’95: similar faculties, and from richer effects, richer faculties. Consequently we should admit that the animals employ the same method or some better one and the same reasoning… (Imagination in Montaigne can include thought. Sebond, LXIII, champions a contention rejected here by Montaigne: it is not convincing to unaided human reason.)
70. Plutarch, Quels animaux?, 513 G; Comment on pourra discerner le flatteur d’avec l’ami, 41A; Herodotus, IV, 71–2; Petronius, Satyricon; and Tibullus, I, ix, 21, cited by Justus Lipsius, Saturnalia, II, 5.
71. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Diogenes. The following pages are largely based on Plutarch, Quels animaux? and Que les brutes usent de la raison, with additions from Pliny, X, 43, and Plutarch’s Life of Sylla, etc. Cf. n. 94, below.
72. Juvenal, Satires, XIV, 74; 81.
73. Persius, Choliambics, which often appear as a preface or postscript to the Satires.
74. Or rather, Flavius Arrianus, tr. Vuitart, Les faicts d’Alexandre, 1581, XIV.
75. Juvenal, XII, 107.
76. Lopez de Gomara, tr. Fumée, Hist. générale des Indes, 1584, II, 9. Cf. G. Bouchet, Sérées, I, 7.
77. ’88: places. We live, both they and ourselves, under the same roof and breathe the same air. There is, save for more or less, a perpetual similarity between us. I once saw…
78. Cf. I, 31, ‘On the Cannibals’ (ad fin.); Martial, Epigrams, IV, xxix, 6.
79. ’88: own, for in our own children it is certain that until they are nearly grown up, we can find nothing to go on but their physical form.
80. Lucretius, IV, 1261 f.; 1266 f. (cited with approval by Tiraquellus, De Legibus Connubialibus who is similarly disapproving of women’s provocatory movements: see his Law XV, in toto).
81. Horace, Satire I, 2, 69. In the final pages of the Essays sex is considered a ‘necessity’ for the vast majority of humankind.
82. Oppianus was translated into Latin by both Adrian Turnebus and Jean Bodin, scholars admired by Montaigne.
83. Ovid, Metam., X, 325.
84. Juvenal, Satires, XV, 160.
85. Virgil, Georgics, IV, 67. For the Ancients, Queen bees were Kings.
86. Lucretius, II, 325 (Lambin, p. 127).
87. Horace, Epistle I, 2, 6.
88. Verses attributed to Augustus, in Martial, Epigrams, XI, 20. The patroness may be Margaret of France, the future wife of Henry of Navarre.
89. Virgil, Aeneid, VII, 718 f., IV, 404; here cited with Seneca in mind (Preface to Quaestiones Naturales).
90. Plutarch, Lives, Sertorius (but it was not Pompey); Virgil, Georgics, IV, 86.
91. S. Goulard, Histoire du Portugal, 1581 (1587), VIII, 19, 244v°.
92. Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, V, 15, etc. This tale of ‘Andro
dus’ and the lion is related in Ravisius Textor’s Officina, which is a probable source of some of Montaigne’s animal lore throughout the ‘Apology’.
93. Virgil, Aeneid, XI, 89.
94. The long series of borrowings from Plutarch on animals ends here (cf. n. 71, above). The paragraphs which follow are indebted to Sebond, chapters 217 and 293.
95. Lucretius IV, 988 f, 992 f, 999 f. (Lambin, p. 345).
96. Propertius, II, 18, 26.
97. Lopez de Gomara, II: XX, 73; LXXXIV, 170 f.; IV: III, 276; Pliny, Hist. Nat. VI, xiii; Gasparo Balbi, Viaggio dell’Indie Orientali, 1590, 76; Pliny, Hist. Nat. VI, xiii.
98. Cf. Cicero, De nat. deorum, I. x. 24.