The Complete Essays
Page 173
2. Ovid, Tristia, III, ii, 9.
3. The Socratic injunction, Aedibus in nostris: cf. III, 9, note 160.
4. Seneca, Epist. moral., XXII, 8 (adapted).
5. Horace, Odes, II, i, 7–8.
6. Henry III enjoined him to return to France (from Delia Villa Spa) and to take up the office of Mayor (or Governor) of Bordeaux.
7. Virgil, Aeneid, XI, 658.
8. ’88: Alexander wrinkled his nose at the ambassadors…
9. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, IV, Alexander Magnus, LXV, mentioning Hercules but not Bacchus.
10. Quintilian, II, xvii, 28.
11. ’88: hidden, more noble ones…
12. Seneca, Epist. moral., VI, 7 (adapted).
Then, ’88: The chief and most legitimate charge…
13. Horace, Odes, IV, ix, 51–2.
14. Statius, Thebaid, X, 704 (read in Justus Lipsius).
15. The standard exemplum is that of Plato, who said to Xenophon, ‘Beat this boy, for I myself am angry.’ (Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VII, Plato Atheniensis, VII.) It was also. Stoic commonplace that the Sage avoids anger.
16. Quintus Curtius, IX, ix, 12; then, Seneca, Epist. moral., XLIV, 7.
17. Doubtless Henry of Navarre (Henry IV).
18. Borrowings from Seneca, Epist. moral., XVI; then, Lucilius as cited by Nonius Marcellus, De proprietate sermonis, V. (This work was published in Paris in 1583.)
19. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, III, Socratica, XXVIII and VII; Cleanthes Assius, II. For Epicurus and his follower Metrodorus cf. Seneca, Epist. moral., XVIII, 9. The quotation is from Seneca, XC, 19 (praising the simple life before the advent of luxury and civilization, the general theme of these pages).
20. Cf. Erasmus, Adages, VII, LXXXVIII, Tuo te pede mettre (Measure yourself by your own yardstick), associated by Erasmus with Nosce teipsum, etc., as the conduct of the wise man.
21. Erasmus, Adages, IV, IX, XXV, Usus est altera natura.
’88: less powerful: and to my humour I would just as soon…
22. Horace, Epistles, I, v, 12.
’88: uti. Similarly I do not reform myself in wisdom by frequenting and dealing with the world without regretting that the amendment came to me so late that I no longer have time to enjoy it: from henceforth I need no other talent than that of endurance before death and old age. What is the use of a new art of living in such a decline and of a new assiduity to guide me along that road along which I have only a few steps to take? Go and teach eloquence to a man banished to the deserts of Arabia. No art is required to decline. Here I am in short…
23. The reformed Gregorian calendar (jumping in fact eleven days) introduced in France in 1582.
24. ’88: is vain and…
25. Petronius (fragment) cited after Justus Lipsius’ De Constantia.
26. The mule was the animal usually ridden on formal occasions by the higher clergy.
27. Quintus Curtius, IV, xxv.
28. Pliny, XXVII, 22 (adapted). Then, Cicero, Tusc. disput., IV, xxv, 55, speaking of the irrational man.
29. Livy, XXXIV, xxxvi.
30. Montaigne was criticized by Sisto Fabri in the Vatican for placing Theodore Beza, the successor to Calvin, among the best contemporary Latin poets. He stood by his opinion (cf. II, 17, ‘On presumption’).
31. In the Gallic War he saved the Capitol but, suspected of monarchical ambitions, was thrown from the Tarpeian Rock. Livy, V, xlvii; VI, xi and Cicero, De Republica, II, xxvii, 49.
32. Apollonius of Tyana claimed to have risen from the dead and to have performed miracles. He, and Mahomet, were by many thought of as would-be rivals and imitators of Christ. Montaigne’s term singeries (monkey-tricks) implies miracles worked by the Devil, the Ape of God.
33. First, the war-party of the Reformed Church; then their confederate Roman Catholic opponents in La Ligue.
34. The murderous and atrocious civil wars between Marius and Sylla are recapitulated with horror and burning indignation by Lucan in the Pharsalia, II, 42–233. Montaigne saw close parallels with the French Civil Wars of Religion.
35. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Dicts notables des Lacedaetnoniens, 223 F (but Plutarch says it was a bronze statue).
36. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Dicts notables des anciens Roys, 189 D – E. (Cotys realized he was prone to fits of anger.)
37. Seneca, Epist. moral., LXXII, 11.
38. Virgil, Aeneid, X, 693–6.
39. For example, when Rome fell St Augustine remarked that all is transitory and vanity succeeds to vanity.
40. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Zeno, with a priapic Latin pun on tumor (swelling, erection); then, Socrates in Xenophon, Memorabilia, I, iii, 13. The ‘poison’ of beauty is that of a scorpion; but it can reach one not only through I kiss but when beauty is seen from afar.
41. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, V, Cyrus Major, III, citing Socrates’ disciple Xenophon (Cyropaedia, V, i, 17; VI, i, 31. Panthea, the wife of Abradatas, was the most beautiful woman of Asia, IV, vi, 11).
42. Once again Montaigne cites the Bible as verbally inspired by the Holy Ghost (here, particularly, in the Lord’s Prayer given in Matthew 6:13).
43. Echoing the final clause of the Lord’s Prayer, Libera nos a malo (Deliver us from evil).
44. Translated in the text by Montaigne. Apparently, verses from Buchanan’s Franciscanus, incorrectly cited from memory.
45. ’88: a tyrannical propensity…
46. Cicero, Tusc. disput., IV, xviii, 42. (Montaigne’s general context owes much here to Seneca.) The next quotation is attributed to Seneca by Marie de Gournay and is indeed from Epist. moral., LXXIV, 33.
47. Virgil, Aeneid, X, 97–9.
48. Cicero, De officiis, II, xviii, 64.
49. Cf. the cause of the Picrocholine War in the Gargantua of Rabelais: a brawl over buns. Commines gives the cause of the Duke’s war; in his Life of Marius Plutarch gives as the first and enduring cause of the great Roman civil strife Marius’ resentment over the triumphant engraving on the ring which Sylla had made to celebrate the capture of Jugurtha.
50. Allusion to the judgement of Paris, who awarded the golden apple for her beauty to Venus (who promised him Helen), thus arousing the wrath of Juno and Minerva. By carrying off Helen to Troy he brought about the Trojan War.
51. Comparison inspired by Plutarch, (tr. Amyot), Comment on peult appercevoir si l’on profite en l’exercise de la vertu, 114 B.
52. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De la mauvaise honte, 79 A–C (after warning that a passion for honour frequently leads to deeds of dishonour).
53. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Bias, I, lxxxvii (not listed by Erasmus (Apophthegmata, VII, Bias Prienaeus). Erasmus asserts there that most of the sayings of the seven sages are fabulous and that many are too trite to be attributed to sages.
54. Attributed by Marie de Gournay to Seneca, but not traced.
55. Virgil, Georgics, II, 490–4.
56. Horace, Odes, III, xvi, 80–1.
57. Cicero, De petitione consolatus, II.
58. ’88: I have an excitable way of reacting towards that to which my will is drawing me, but that trait…
59. Cicero, De officiis, I, xxxiv, 124 – on the right conduct for the good private citizen.
60. ’88: other such lack-lustre and unpretentious…
61. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Comment on pourra discerner le flatteur d’avec l’ami, 53 D.
62. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, IV, Alexander Magnus, I.
63. Actually, it is Socrates who says this of Alcibiades (Plato, Alcibiades I, 105 A), where Alexander is mentioned also in this context.
64. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Comment on pourra apparcevoir, si l’on profite en l’exercice de la vertu, 116 D: ‘See how unboastful and unarrogant I am, Dionysia!’ By changing the servant-girl’s name to Perrette Montaigne gives his allusion the tone of a French farce.
65. Psalm 115 (113)1.
66. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De communes conceptions, contre les Stoïques, 575 D, citing a book about Zeus (now lost) by Chysippus.
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br /> 67. Cicero, De officiis, II, xxii, 76, repeating Cicero’s own judgement. (Panaetius of Rhodes was a Stoic philosopher).
68. Cicero, De finibus, II, xv, 50.
69. Cicero’s vanity was indeed great. (Montaigne cites his Tusc. disput., II, xxvi, 64.)
70. ’88: much hoped for that…
71. Virgil, Aeneid, V, 849, 848 (two lines of the Aeneid with the words rearranged and adapted).
1. A further allusion to the Gregorian reform of the calendar (1582). Cf. III, 10, note 23. The previous reform was that of the Emperor Augustus.
2. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Demandes des choses Romaines, 464 B, drawing the same conclusions as Montaigne.
3. Persius, Satires, I, 20.
4. Cicero, Academica, II (Lucullus), XXI, 68.
5. Livy, XXVIII, xxiv.
6. Cicero, De divinatione, II, xxxix, 81; then, St Augustine, City of God, VI, x. (Montaigne’s context echoes Seneca, Epist. moral., LXXXI, etc.)
7. Seneca, Epist. moral., CVIII, 7; then, Quintus Curtius, IX, ii.
8. Cicero, Academica, II (Lucullus), xlvii, 146.
9. The Scholastic axiom, Admiratio parit scientiam. (Consult Signoriello, Lexicon peripateticum philosophico-theologicum, s.v. Admiratio, citing Thomas Aquinas.) The saying derives from Plato, Theaetetus, 155 D. (Plato derived the name of Thaumas, Iris’ father, from thauma, wonder, prodigy. Montaigne’s name for him, Thaumantis, is in fact the name of Isis herself.)
10. The case of Martin Guerre (now well-known from a film thanks to the scholarship of Professor Nathalie Zemon Davies). Cf. the Arrest memorable du Parlement de Tholose contenant une histoire prodigieuse d’un supposé mary, advenüe de nostre temps… par M. lean de Coras, Paris, 1582. Coras (p. 129) justifies the sentence of strangulation by hanging followed by the public burning of the body but (pp. 130–3) makes a passionate plea against burning anyone alive and against cruel torturings as unworthy of Christians, since they are partly based on a desire to purge one’s own guilt.
11. The Areopagus in Athens had to judge a wife who murdered her second husband who, with his own son, had murdered her child by her dead husband. (This became the classical example of a casus perplexus, a case with the maximum degree of moral difficulty.) The Areopagus decreed that the parties concerned were to return to the Court, in person, one hundred years later! Tiraquellus evokes this well-known exemplum in his treatise De poenis temperandis (Opera, 1597, VII, 14). Cf. Rabelais (Tiers Livre, TLF, XLIIII, 6–44).
12. Cf. II Chronicles 33; II Kings 9;. Samuel 28 (the Witch of Endor consulted by Saul).
13. The Holy Ghost who, for Montaigne, was the author of Scripture.
14. The second from Tacitus, Hist., I, xxii; the first is attributed by Marie de Gournay to Pliny, but remains untraced.
15. Cicero, Academica, II (Lucullus), xxvii, 87.
16. In law. maleficus (a witch, an ‘evil-doer’) was taken in general as one who harmed another and was not necessarily restricted to incantatores (workers of spells). (Cf. Spiegel, Lexicon Juris, s.v.) Montaigne here excludes those not allegedly working their evil through magic; thus strengthening and limiting his argument. The crucial biblical authority is Exodus 22:18, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ But what does it mean? The Greek Septuagint uses the word pharmakous here, the Clementine Vulgate uses maleficos. Both words apply to both sexes. But Hebraists, since at least Nicolas of Lyra, insisted that the original term kashaph is used in the feminine. Liberal theologians clung to the Greek term and insisted that it means sorcerers who use potions to produce their wicked effects.
17. As Montaigne is about to talk of physical rapture from one place to another he is doubtless thinking of the rapture of Philip (Acts 8:39) when the ‘Spirit of the Lord caught away’ Philip from the road to Gaza so that he was found at Azotus.
18. St Augustine, City of God, XIX, xviii, contrasting scriptural truth with human testimony. Vives comments that no human knowledge, since it is known through the senses, can have the certainty of Scripture.
19. The so-called witches’ spot; when pricked the true witch felt no sensation there. Inquisitors made painful searches for such a spot on the body of anyone charged with witchcraft.
20. Hemlock (cicuta) was used by the Greeks to poison criminals – hence Socrates’ death by it; hellebore was used to purge madness.
21. Livy, VIII, xviii.
22. From the earliest times, Roman law placed the insane in the primary care of their blood relations.
23. It was said that whoever undid the untieable knot in the temple of Gordius would conquer the East: Alexander sliced it through with his sword. Cf. Erasmus, Adages, I, I, VI, Nodum solvere and, I, IX, XLVIII, Heraculanus nodus. (Throughout this passage Montaigne plays on the double meaning of solutio in Latin: ‘unloosening’ and ‘resolving’.)
24. St Augustine, City of God, XVIII, xviii, suggesting that the cause was diabolical deception working through a Platonizing philosopher. Vives has a long theological note on the subject, rejecting as fictional Apuleius’ metamorphosis into a donkey in his Golden Ass.
25. Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, xxv, 60.
26. Erasmus, Adages, II, IX, XLIX, Claudus optime virum agit. Cf. also Septalius’ note in his edition of Aristotle’s (or Pseudo-Aristotle’s) Problemata X, 25 (26); Coelius Richerius Rhodiginus, Antiquae Lectiones, XIV, v, Cur claudi salaciores. Cf. also Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VIII, Thrasea, second hundred, XXI.
27. Torquato Tasso, Paragon dell’ Italia alla Francia; Suetonius, Life of Caligula, III.
28. Cf. Erasmus, Adages, I, I, XCIV, Cothurno versatilior. Theramenes was an Athenian rhetorician who could find arguments for either party.
29. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, IV, Antigonus Rex Macedonian, XV.
30. Virgil, Georgics, I, 89–93 (two of several reasons why burning stubble is good for crops).
31. Translated from Cicero, Academica, II (Lucullus), xxxiv, 108: ‘adsensionem, id est, opinationem et temeritatem.’
32. From Maximus Planudes’ Life of Aesop, frequently printed with the Fables.
1. ’88: our tastes and practices…
2. ’88: reproach and insult? Socrates…
3. Lucan, Pharsalia, II, 381–2, praising Cato.
4. ’88: about either for judging or comparing. He was…
5. In the Renaissance this was summed up in the Socratic adage, Quae supra nos, nihil ad nos (What is above us is nothing to do with us). As Erasmus points out (I; VI; LXIX) the early Christian writer Lucius Lactantius considered it to be ‘famous and approved by all’.
6. Seneca, Epist. moral., CVI, 12.
7. Tacitus, Agricola, I, x.
8. The notion that the soul, like the body, needs pabulum (food, nourishment) is Platonic.
9. Christian ‘fools’ often combined real or pretended ignorance and madness with their other ascetic ideals and practices. An echo of Matthew 5:3, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’ (i.e., the foolish).
10. Cf. for example the adages of Erasmus mentioned in III, 9, ‘On vanity’, note 160.
11. ’88: what is common and natural is vain and superfluous…
Then, Seneca, Epist. moral., CVI, 11 (adapted).
12. [B] instead of [C]: philosopher. Erudition, while making an assay…
13. Cicero, Tusc. disput., V, v, B (criticizing Stoic arguments); Seneca, Epist. moral., LXXV, 5 (adapted).
14. ’88: His burning emotion, so animated, show that…
In [C], Seneca, Epist. moral., CXV, 2, and CXIV, 3; in both cases contrasting mere words and style with solid moral action.
15. ’88: more pointed, puts in the goad…
16. ’88: more solid, constantly…
17. Such temptations as St Jerome in the desert or the fearsome hallucinations of St Antony.
18. ’88: such subtleties and learned maxims…
19. Seneca, Epist. moral., XCV, B.
20. Attributed by Marie de Gournay to ‘Seneca’s Epistles’, but untraced. Then, Ovid, Ex Ponto, I, iii, 57–8.
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bsp; 21. Source unknown; then, Virgil, Aeneid, XII, 46; Catullus, Epithalamia Thetis et Pelei, 406–7.
22. Doubtless an echo of the saying of Alcibiades that an army should be organized under a Head, as is the human body.
23. Virgil, Georgics, I, 500, applied almost certainly by Montaigne to the then Protestant Henry of Navarre, who, as the Roman Catholic Henri Quatre, did indeed bring comparative peace and moral government to France.
24. Both cited by Justus Lipsius, Politici, V, xiii.
25. Plutarch, Life of Brutus.
26. Plato, Utters, VII, 331.
27. How far man should ‘work together’ with God is a major theological problem, much quarrelled over during the Renaissance. Montaigne gives the prime and indispensable role to divine grace but expects man to work together with God. His theology is orthodox, as is his treating Plato as a pagan – for Erasmus he was a proto-Christian.