462. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xiv, 100–4.
’88: Waking man: Since that particular state, by endowing objects with a being different from the one they have, and since a jaundiced humour changes everything to yellow, is it not likely… (Then, for rightful state, ordinary state.)
463. Ibid., xiv, 102.
464. Lucretius, IV, 513 (Lambin, pp. 309–11).
465. Both sides in the religious wars claim to be the one true Church, so no Christian anywhere can remain impartial.
466. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xiv, 104–6.
467. Ibid., 115–17.
468. Ibid., II, vii, 89.
469. Ibid., II, vii, 72–5. A similar argument appealed to St Augustine (Contra academicos, II, 7); cf. also Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, II, 58–9.
470. Ibid., II, ix, 88–9: the climax to Sextus’ denial that appearances can be judged as probable, let alone true. It rules out dialectic as a means of telling truth from error (ibid., 94) and continues suspension of judgement (95).
471. This Platonic assertion forces man to go beyond the transient flux of things and to seek the unchanging Reality lying behind it. From now to the last paragraph Montaigne transcribes, with minor adaptations, a very large borrowing from Amyot’s translation of Plutarch: Que signifioit ce mot E’i (456H-357E); this is indicated here by continuous quotation marks: in the original no indication of any kind shows that this is a borrowing. (Even Marie de Gournay did not recognize it as such.) Departures from the original version by Amyot are indicated below. (Amyot’s French version differs markedly from modern interpretations of the original Greek of Plutarch.)
472. Plutarch, 356H: with true Being…
473. Plato, Theaetetus, 180E.
474. Not Pythagoras but Protagoras: cf. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xxxii, 217.
475. Plutarch, Des communes conceptions contre les Stoïques, 586B—C. For Heraclitus, see Aristotle, Metaph., IV, v, 1010a.
476. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Pourquoi la justice divine differe quelquefois la punition des malefices, 264. (Some small changes to Amyot’s French here, to accommodate the interpolations; grammar and clarity suffer.)
477. Lucretius, V, 828 (Lambin, p. 426).
478. Five words of Amyot omitted and a phrase adapted (357B).
479. Small omission from Amyot (357B).
480. Omission: Amyot, 357C (‘like a sinking ship in which are contained generation and corruption’).
481. Montaigne adds the words ‘or born’ (ou nées) and omits, ‘intermingled with Time’ (357D).
482. The long borrowing from Plutarch ends here. The concluding words of the treatise On the E’i at Delphi emphasize its connection with Montaigne’s themes of self-knowledge and the abasement of Man: ‘And meanwhile it seems that this word E’i is somewhat opposed to the precept Know Thyself and also in some ways accordant and agreeable to it: the one is a kind of verbal astonishment and adoration before God, as being Eternal and Ever in Being, while the other is a warning and reminder to mortal man of the weakness and debility of his nature’ (358C).
483. Seneca, Quaest. nat., I (Preface), cited by Sebond, tr. Montaigne, 186r°.
’88: humanity.’ There is in all his Stoic school no saying truer than that one: but to make…
484. ’88: pulled up by divine grace: but not otherwise. (The closing words of the Apology until [C].)
485. Metamorphose may imply ‘transfiguration’: it certainly implies ‘transformation’ – the theme of the final pages of the last chapter (III, 13, ‘On experience’).
1. An idea of Lucretius, already exploited in II, 12, ‘An apology for Raymond Sebond’.
2. Virgil, Aeneid, III, 72.
3. Lucretius, De nat. rerum, II, 1165–8.
4. Marcus Annaeus Seneca, Suasoriae, I, iv.
5. Lucan, Pharsalia, V, 579–82; cf. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, IV, Julius Caesar, IX.
6. Lucan, ibid., V, 653–6.
7. Virgil, Georgics, I, 466–7.
8. Pliny, Hist. nat., II, viii.
9. Caligula’s cruelty was legendary, but the saying is that of Tiberius: Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VI, Tiberius Caesar, X: ‘Carvillius has got away.’
10. Lucan, Pharsalia, II, 178–80.
11. Ever since Lampridius’ Life of him, the Emperor Heliogabalus, the son of Antonius Caracalla, was infamous for his effeminacy and luxurious ways.
12. Lucan, Pharsalia, IV, 798.
13. Plutarch, Life of Caesar.
14. Tacitus, Annals, IV, xxii.
15. Tacitus, ibid., VI, xlviii.
16. Ravisius Textor, Officina; chapter headed ‘Mortem qui sibi consciverunt’.
17. Cf. Ravisius Textor, ibid.
18. Tacitus, Annals, XVI, xv.
19. Anecdote from Xiphilinus’ Life of Hadrian.
20. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Dicts des anciens Roys, 209 F.
21. Pliny, Hist. nat., VII, liii.
22. Cited by Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, viii, 15.
23. His Epistulae ad Atticum.
24. Cornelius Nepos, Life of Atticus.
25. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Cleanthes.
26. Horace, Ars poetica, 467.
27. Seneca’s Epist. moral., XXIX, is devoted to the illness of Marcus Tullius Marcellinus, a friend of his, whose suicide is related in LXXVII, 5 ff.
28. That is, Cato of Utica (the defender of the Republic against Julius Caesar) ‘murdered himself’ in a manner more exalted than that of Marcellinus and it strikes us with more ecstatic amazement (Plutarch, Life of Cato of Utica).
1. The dilemma of Buridan’s ass: it starved to death when equidistant from identical food.
2. The mathematician Jacques Peletier du Mans had puzzled Montaigne with conic asymptotes which, towards the end of II, 12 (‘An apology for Raymond Sebond’) Montaigne assimilated to Pyrrhonist arguments which undermine reason and experience. (Such asymptotes are lines which ever approach a given curve but never touch it within infinity.)
3. A saying of Pliny’s (Hist. nat., II, vii) which Montaigne inscribed in his library; until [C] he translated it in his text.
1. The sceptics. Cf. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, vi, 12.
2. ’80: most beautiful and very fine saying…
Seneca, Epist. moral., IV, 6.
3. Ibid., XCVIII, 6.
4. Ibid., IV, 5–6.
5. Ovid, Amores, II, xix, 27–8.
6. Seneca, De beneficiis, VII, ix.
7. Martial, Epigrams, IV, xxxvii.
8. Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus.
9. Horace, Epodes, XI, 9–10 (adapted).
10. Plutarch, Life of Pompey the Great.
11. Lucretius, De nat. rerum, IV, 1076–9.
12. Cato of Utica lent his second wife, Marcia, to Hortensius. This was much commented on by Christian writers. Cf. Tiraquellus, De legibus connubialibus, VII, 28.
13. Horace, Satires, I, ii, 108 (a huntsman comparing his course of love to his pursuit of a hare).
14. Ovid, Amores, II, xix, 47–8.
15. For Plato it is Want (Poros) and Plenty who together give birth to love: neither does by itself. Cf. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De Isis et Osiris, 33OH–331B.
16. Terence, Phormio, I, iii, 10.
17. Ovid, Amores, II, xix, 33.
18. Propertius, II, xiv, 19–20.
19. The mistress, then wife, of Nero. Tacitus, Annals, XIII, xlv.
20. Virgil, Eclogues, III, 65, then, Propertius, II, xv, 6.
21. [A1] until [C]: and more perfect than in any other nation. Beauty…
22. Throughout the Roman Empire divorce was permitted by law. The Roman Catholic Church forbade it utterly, though it did allow divortium (legal separation) and annulment.
23. Ovid, Amores, II, xix, 3.
24. Seneca, De clementia, I, xxiii.
25. Claudius Rutilius (of Numantia; fl. AD 410), De reditu suo, 397.
26. See Charles Estienne, Dictionarium historicum, s.v. ‘Argippei’, when the same details
are given. (The eventual source is Herodotus.)
27. Lopez de Gomara, Histoire des Indes, III, xxx.
28. Seneca, Epist. moral., LXVIII, 4.
29. The first form of this chapter dates from about 1576. But Montaigne’s long reflection here was written on the Bordeaux copy just before he died in 1592.
1. Opinion deriving from Aristotle’s treatise On Interpretation.
2. Praising and exalting God’s ‘name’ is a leitmotiv of the psalms.
3. Cf. I Timothy 1:17; I Chronicles 29:11–13.
[A] until [C]: nothing so vain and so remotely…
4. The paeon of the angelic host at the Nativity (Luke 1:14).
5. Cicero, De finibus, III, xvii, 57.
6. Translated from Homer, Odyssey, XII, 184.
7. From the same section of Cicero’s De finibus as in note 5.
8. Juvenal, Satires, VII, 81.
9. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Si ce nom commun est bien dict, Cache ta vie, 291 A ff.
10. Seneca, Epist. moral., XXI, 3 ff.
11. Quoted from Cicero, De finibus, II, xxx, 96–7, to prove how far apart were Epicurus’ words and his practices.
12. Same conclusion in Cicero, ibid., 101 (where the heir is normally called Amynochus).
13. He was leader of the New Academy and a declared opponent of the Stoics. His ideas are expounded by Cicero in De finibus, II, 35–59.
14. Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics, II, vii (1107b), during a general discussion of the Mean.
15. Horace, Odes, IV, ix, 29–30. (In context Horace means that heroes need poets to sing of their glories.)
16. Cicero, De finibus, II, xviii, 59.
17. Cicero, ibid., II, xviii, 58: Cicero adds that ‘you yourself would undoubtedly have done the same’.
18. Ibid., II, xvii, 55.
19. Those men, praised by Cicero (De finibus, II, xviii, 57), are condemned for the same reason as Montaigne in De officiis, III, 73.
20. Cicero, De officiis, III, x, 44 (adapted).
21. St Augustine, City of God, VII, iii; citing Sallust.
22. Cicero held that glory ‘follows virtue like a shadow’: Tusc. disput., I, xlv, 110.
23. [A] until [C]: who teach our fighting-men to have honour as their target and to seek nothing from valour but reputation, what do they achieve…
Cicero, De officiis, I, iv, 14 (adapted).
24. Ibid., I, xix, 65.
25. Achieving tranquillity of mind was the aim of many classical philosophers.
26. II Corinthians 1:12.
27. Ariosto, Orlando furioso, XI, lxxxi.
28. Horace, Odes, III, ii, 17–20.
29. Cicero, De finibus, I, x, 36.
30. Cicero, Tusc. disput., V, xxxvi, 104.
31. Livy, XXXI, xxxiv.
32. Seneca, Epist. moral., XCI, 19 (adapted).
33. Cicero, De finibus, II, xv, 49. (A different reading is now current.)
34. Quintilian, I, xii, 19.
35. Ovid, Heroïdes, I, 18.
36. Livy, LIV, xxii.
37. Fabius’ delaying tactics in the war against Carthage earned him the hostile nickname Cunctator (the Delayer). It later became a title of praise (Livy, XXX, xxvi).
38. Persius, Satires, I, 47–9.
39. King Gyges’ ring (Cicero, De officiis, III, xix, 78).
40. Horace, Epistles, I, xvi, 39–40.
41. Persius, Satires, I, 5–7.
42. To make himself famous Herostratus set fire to the temple of Diana at Ephesus; Lucius Manlius the dictator sought renown from his imperious bullying (Livy, VII, iii). (Often cited together.)
43. There are no famous Eyquems in England, though links between families in the Bordeaux region and England were strong ever since both formed part of the Norman domains.
44. Persius, Satires, I, 37–40. (Cf. I, 46, ‘On names’.)
45. Juvenal, Satires, XIII, 9–10.
46. Virgil, Aeneid, VII, 646.
47. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Dicts notables des Lacedaemoniens, 216H-217A.
48. Virgil, Aeneid, V, 302.
49. Seneca, Epist. moral., LXXXI, 20; Cicero, De finibus, II, xxii, 73.
50. Plato, Laws, XII, 950B–C. Plato’s ‘paedagogue’ is Socrates.
51. Cicero, De nat. deorum, I, xx, 53; Diogenes Laertius, Life of Plato, II, xxvi, 199 (tr. Timon).
52. Exodus 20:1 f.
53. Jean de Joinville, Cronique de Saint Loys, LVI; Lucan, Pharsalia, I, 461–2.
54. Cicero, De finibus, II, xv, 48.
55. Ovid, Amores, III, iv, 4. (Cf. Christ’s warning in Matthew 5:28.)
56. Montaigne’s discussion of honour echoes in general Aristotle’s conception of the great-souled man (Nicomachaean Ethics, IV, iii, 1124a–b).
1. Horace, Satires, II, 1, 30–4; Tacitus, Agricola, 1.
2. Ammianus Marcellinus, XXI, xvi.
3. [A] until [C]: the cause of the movement of the Eighth Sphere and of the…
Epicycles form part of the system of Ptolomaic astronomy. Rabelais makes a similar point about Empedocles: Pantagruel, TLF, X, 24.
4. Inscribed, in Latin, in Montaigne’s library and attributed there to Eccl. I. This is, at best, but a paraphrase of Ecclesiastes I. (There is nothing relevant in Ecclesiasticus I)
[A]: says the sacrosanct Writ…
5. [A] until [C]: feebleness. I know myself so well that if anything came from me which pleased me, I would owe it certainly to Fortune. Nothing of mine…
6. Horace, Ars poetica, 272–3, then Martial, Epigrams, XII, lxiii.
7. Putarch, Dionysius. (The Letuæa were festivals of Bacchus in Athens with contests between dramatists.)
8. Ovid, Ex ponto, I, v, 15–16; written in exile on the Black Sea.
9. ’88: And even in my imagination I do not conceive things in their greatest perfection. From which I know that what I see produced by those great fertile minds…
10. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Preceptes de mariage, 147F (Plato tells the severe Xenocrates to ‘sacrifice to the Graces’: a goodwife should do the same). The author and source of the verse are, however, untraced.
11. Popular Epicurean writers, all of whose works are lost. Montaigne uses Cicero’s description in the preceding lines (Academica, I, ii, 5). The first writer was Amafinius not Amafanius.
12. In his Latin translation of Plato’s Timaeus, II. Then, ’80: to slacken our string…
13. Horace, Ars poetica, 25–6. Then Plato, Laws, X, 887 B.
14. Tacitus, De Oratoribus, XXXIX.
15. Unlike the pagan Greeks, Christians believe in the resurrection of the dead not in the immortality of the soul permanently freed from the body. The major source of Montaigne’s important concept of the ‘marriage’ of body and soul is Raymond Sebond. A secondary influence is doubtless Lucretius. In general, cf. Cicero, De finibus, IV, vii, 16–17.
16. Lucretius, V, 1109–11.
17. Gaius Marius, the conqueror of Jugurtha (Vegetius, De re militari, I, v); Baldassare Castiglione, Courtier, Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics, IV, iii, 1123b.
18. Aristotle, Politics, IV, xliv; then Virgil, Aeneid, VII, 783–4, replacing ’80: Colloque tenus supereminet omnes [He stood head and neck above them]. Ovid, Metamorphoses, II, 275.
19. Psalm 44 (45):3. (The application of this psalm to Christ is traditional.) Plato, Republic, VII, 535.
20. Montaigne had first written Phocion. (Anecdote from Plutarch’s Life of Philopoemen.)
21. Martial, Epigrams, II, xxxvi, 5; then Lucretius, II, 1131–2, and Horace, Epistles, II, ii, 55. (In the next sentence: [A]: son of the most agile father to be seen in his time, with an energy…)
22. Horace, Satires, II, ii, 12; then Juvenal, Satires, III, 54–5.
23. Horace, Epistles, II, ii, 201–4.
Until [C]: priores, having been born such that I did not have to go in quest of other advantages. The only talent…
24. ’80: of any kind: I am very badly schooled in self-constraint, unskilled at any sort of business or painful negotiations,
having never had to manage anything but myself and being brought up from boyhood in a manner slack and free…
Following verse from Horace, Epistles, I, vi, 45–6.
25. Seneca, the dramatist; Agamemnon, III, i, 29.
26. Terence, Adelphi, II, iii, 11; then Propertius, III, iii, 23 and Seneca, the dramatist, Agamemnon, II, i, 47.
27. Horace, Epistles, I, i, 51: then, Propertius III, ix, 5–6 and Juvenal, XIII, 60–3.
28. Cicero, Pro Ligario, X.
29. Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics, IV, iii, 1124b; Apollonius’ remark has not been traced, but cf. Plutarch, Comment il fault nourrir les enfants, 6H.
30. Charles VIII. Cf. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Du trop parler, 92E–F; Then, Cicero, De Officiis, II, ix, 34.
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