The Complete Essays
Page 158
95. Ibid.,LXXV, 1.
96. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Epicurus.
97. That is, they talk in French (not Gascon).
98. Plato, Laws, I, 641E.
99. A pun known only from John Stobaeus’ compendium of Greek sayings (xxxvi). There is a play on the two senses of logos in Greek: reason and word.
100. ’80: without constraint, I had learned…
101. All these great Latinists were masters at the Collège de Guyenne in Bordeaux, to which Montaigne was sent after studying at home.
102. [A]: for me: and there was always at hand someone who played the spinet for this purpose. This example…
103. ’80: was dull. To top…
104. Virgil, Eclogue, VIII, 39 (adapted).
105. These plays were all in Latin; they included no doubt Muret’s Julius Caesar and Buchanan’s Jephthes. Guerante’s plays are not known.
106. Livy, XXIV, xxiv.
1. Cicero, Academica, II, ii, 127.
2. Horace, Epistles, II, ii, 208–9.
3. Lucretius, II, 1037–8; 1032–5.
4. Lucretius, VI, 674–7; Cicero, De natura deorum, II, XXXVIII, 96.
5. ’80: power of God with more reverence…
6. In Christian theology it is only an event which occurs against the whole order of Nature which constitutes a miracle.
7. In 1385 the Comte de Foix took to his rooms and then was able to announce that there had just occurred in Portugal a huge slaughter of soldiers from Béarn. It was believed that he had a familiar spirit, either one called Orthon or another like him, who, in an earlier period, had deserted the local curé to serve the Seigneur de Corasse (Froissart, III, 17).
8. Nicole Gilles, Annales des moderateurs des belliqueuses Gaulles; the event ‘happened’ in 1233.
9. Plutarch, Life of Paulus Aemilius. The reference to Caesar is puzzling.
10. Such works as the De Plini erroribus of Nicolaus Leonicenus had helped spread criticisms of Pliny.
11. Jean Bouchet, Annales d’ Acquitaine, Poitiers, 1567 etc., pp. 21–30.
12. St Augustine, City of God, XII, viii.
13. Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, xxi, 49, adapted: Cicero wrote, ‘For even though Plato gave no reasons – note what tribute I pay to him – he would convince me by his very authority.’
1. Horace, Ars poetica, 4. (Poets can create monsters at will; say a fair maid with the tail of a fish, that is, a mermaid.)
2. Edited and translated by Malcolm Smith as Slaves by Choice, Runnymede Books, RHBNC, Egham, 1988.
3. ’80: young, not having reached the age of eighteen years, as…
4. Cf. E. de La Boëtie: Mémoire sur la pacification des troubles, ed. Malcolm Smith, TLF, Droz, Geneva, 1983. This work antedates the Royal Edict of 17 January 1562 (which afforded limited toleration to Protestants and recognized the ‘Allegedly Reformed Church’. Montaigne published neither of these in his collection of the works of La Boëtie, F. Morel, Paris, 1571, since (as the Preface says) the time was ‘too unpleasant’. This chapter is an apology for La Boëtie, a defence of his ideas and a rejection of the smear that such loyal friendships can entail disloyalty to the State (a question already raised in antiquity).
5. For Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics, VIII, 1, a good fellowship (or society) is one which fosters ‘friendship’ in all of its senses.
6. Cf. C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves, Collins, Fount Paperbacks, 1960.
7. Montaigne mentions this in I, 23: ‘On habit: and on never easily changing a traditional law’.
[A]: the other. Friendship never gets to such a point. There…
8. [A]: much the same as [C], but Aristippus not named. (Cf. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, III, Aristippus, LV, the probable source of [C]).
9. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De l’amitié fraternelle, 82E. Montaigne coarsens the terms of the bad brother (a philosopher) who in Plutarch simply refers to ‘the same natural organ’.
10. The antithesis of ‘willing slavery’, the subject of La Boëtie’s book.
11. Horace, Odes, II, ii, 6–7 (adapted to apply to Montaigne).
12. Catullus, Epigrams, LXVI, 17–18.
13. Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, X, vii.
14. ’80: union, it is likely that…
15. Cicero, Tusc. disput., IV, xxxiii, 70. (In Greek philosophical homosexuality the older man was the Lover; the younger, the Beloved, showed admiration, or gratitude for instruction.)
16. Cupid. (The ‘Academy’ was the School of Plato.)
17. In Plato’s Symposium (or Banquet), the main general source of all of [C] here.
18. Ibid.: tyrannies do not favour (homosexual) friendship-love; Hipparchus, tyrant of Athens, was therefore assassinated by the friends Harmodius and Aristogiton. (Cf. Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, XVII, 21: 7; Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, xlix, 116.)
19. Cicero, Tusc. disput., IV, xxiv, 71.
20. Cicero, De amicitia, XX, 74.
21. ’80: some divine force of destiny…
22. Published in the 1571 edition of La Boëtie’s works by Montaigne.
23. Cicero, De amicitia, XI, 33–9.
24. ’80: the wishes of Gracchus, for which he could answer as for his own. But…
25. Chilo’s chilling judgement was well known (cf. Du Bellay, Regrets, 140). It was normally attributed to Bias, one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Cf. Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, 1.3.30; Cicero, De amicitia, XVI, 49; Aristotle, Rhetoric, II, 14.
26. ’88: in common practice, in relation…
27. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VII, Aristoteles Stagirites, XXVIII.
28. Erasmus, ibid., VII, Aristoteles Stagirites, XIX.
29. Erasmus, ibid., III, Diogenes Cynicus, LXXXII.
30. From Lucian of Samosata, Toxaris, or, On friendship, XXII.
31. Xenophon, Cyropaedia, VIII, iii, 270.
32. Terence, Heautontimorumenos, I, i, 28.
33. Agesilaus (Cf. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, I, Agesilaus, LXVIII).
34. Horace, Satires, I, v, 44.
35. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De l’amitié fraternelle, 82C–D.
36. ’80: full happiness and tranquillity.
37. Virgil, Aeneid, V, 49–50.
38. Terence, Heautontimorumenos, I, 1, 97–8.
39. Horace, Odes, II, xvii, 5–9.
40. Catullus, LXVIII, 20 f.; LXV, 9 f. (adapted).
41. ’80: this eighteen-year-old boy. (Montaigne was planning to publish here, as the central ‘painting’ enhanced by his fringe of ‘grotesques’, La Boëtie’s essay ‘On Willing Slavery’. It had been exploited by Protestants as an anti-monarchist pamphlet, so he reluctantly omits it.)
42. ’80: life. It consists of twenty-nine sonnets which the Sieur de Poiferré, a man both practical and understanding who knew him long before me, has found by chance at home among his other papers and has just sent to me: for which I am much beholden to him; and I would wish that others who possess other fragments of his writings scattered here and there would do the same.
1. The printed versions are less abrupt: ’95: wanton. These nine-and-twenty sonnets of Estienne de La Boëtie which were placed here have since been printed with his works.
This edition of La Boëtie’s Oeuvres remains untraced, but the sonnets themselves were printed in all the editions.
1. Horace, Epistles, I, vi, 15–16.
2. Romans 12:3, following the Vulgate Latin version in which Montaigne read his Bible. (The Greek original talks not of ‘moderation’ but of a sober estimate of one’s unimportance.) The text was inscribed in Montaigne’s library.
’88: playing with the subtlety of words; behave immoderately in; just and virtuous; The word of God… (By both ‘word’ and ‘voice’ of God Montaigne means Holy Scripture.)
3. Perhaps King Henry III.
4. Diodorus Siculus, XI, x; XII, xix.
5. Plato, Gorgias, 484C-D.
6. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, IIa, IIac, 154, art. 9: the standard reference; cf. A. Tiraquellus, De legibus connubialibus, VII, 46.
>
7. ’80: reason, either in loving-affection or in the practices of pleasure. Those…
8. ’80: following (since there is a great danger that they may lose themselves in these excesses): even those…
9. ’80: matters strange and unlawful…
10. ’80: old; and I hold it to be certain that it is much holier to abstain. There is a people who abominate…
11. Plato, Laws, VIII, 838A ff.; Guillaume Postel, Histoire des Turcs; for Zenobia, Tiraquellus, De legibus connubialibus, IX, 88.
12. Plato, Laws, III, 390 BC, after Homer, Iiad, XIV, 294–341.
13. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Preceptes de manage, 146E.
[A]: their unruly and immoderate appetites…
14. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Instruction pour ceux qui manient les affaires d’Estat, 167 H; Cicero, De officiis, I, xl, 144, distinguishing between moderation (modestia) and orderly conduct (eutaxia).
15. ’80: permitting himself loving-friendships with other women… (i.e. ’80: amitié; [C]: amour.)
16. E.g., Eusebius (Pamphilus), Ecclesiastical History, IV.
17. Propertius, III, vii, 32.
18. The Senator Junius Gallo; cf. Tacitus, Annals, VI, iii.
19. A Renaissance medical axiom. It led doctors to recommend, for example, that the cold of Montaigne’s favourite fruit, melons, be ‘cured’ by the heat of ham, pepper or ginger; but it applied to most illnesses too.
20. Related by Laonicus Chalcocondylas (tr. Blaise de Vigenère), Histoire de la décadence de l’empire grec, VII, iv.
21. All from Francisco Lopez de Gomara, Historia de Mexico, Antwerp, 1554 (tr. A. de Cravaliz as Historia del Capitano Don Fernando Cortes, Rome, 1556).
1. Plutarch, Life of Pyrrhus and Life of Flaminius.
2. Durand de Villegagnon struck land, in Brazil, in 1557. Cf. Lettres sur la navigation du chevalier de Villegaignon es terres de l’Amérique, Paris, 1557, by an author who calls himself simply N.B.
3. ’80: our bellies, as they say, applying it to those whose appetite and hunger make them desire more meat than they can manage: I fear that we too have curiosity far more…
4. Plato, Timaeus, 24E etc., and Girolamo Benzoni, Historia del mondo novo, Venice 1565. Cf. also Plato, Critias, 113 A ff.
5. Virgil, Aeneid, III, 414–17.
6. Horace, Ars poetica, 65–6.
7. ’88: changes sickly and feverish. When…
8. The Secreta secretorum is supposititious. Montaigne is following Girolamo Benzoni.
9. Propertius, I, ii, 10–12.
10. Plato, Laws, X, 889 A-C.
11. Cf. Elizabeth Armstrong, Ronsard and the Age of Gold, Cambridge, 1968.
12. Seneca, Epist. moral., XC, 44. (This epistle is a major defence of the innocence of natural man before he was corrupted by philosophy and progress.)
13. Virgil, Georgics, II, 208.
14. One of Montaigne’s sources was Simon Goulart’s Histoire du Portugal, Paris, 1587, based on a work by Bishop Jeronimo Osorio (da Fonseca) and others.
15. Suidas, Historica, caeteraque omnia quae ad cognitionem rerum spectant, Basle, 1564.
16. Cf. Cicero, De divinatione, I, i. 1; I Peter 1:2; I Corinthians 12:20; 13:2.
17. Herodotus, History, IV, Ixix.
18. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, III, xxiv; Caesar, Gallic Wars, VII, lvii-lviii; Juvenal, Satires, XV, 93–4.
19. Mummies were imported for use in medicines. (Othello’s handkerchief was steeped in ‘juice of mummy’.)
20. ’80: generously in every way, and furnish them with all the comforts they can devise but…
21. ’80: their virtue and their constancy…
22. ’80: true and solid victory…
23. Claudian, De sexto consulatu Honorii, 248–9.
24. Nicolas Chalcocondylas (tr. Blaise de Vigenère), De la décadence de l’empire grec, V, ix.
25. Seneca, De constantia, II.
26. ’80: by us: he is vanquished in practice but not by reason; it is his bad luck which we may indict not his cowardice. Sometimes…
27. Cf. Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, xli, 100 for the glory of Leonidas’ death in the defile of Thermopylae.
28. Diodorus Siculus, XV, xii.
29. ’80: their constancy and ours…
30. Standard examples: cf. Tiraquellus, De legibus connubialibus, XIII, 35, for all these un-jealous wives. (But Leah and Sarah were in fact Jacob’s wives.)
31. Anacreon was the great love-poet of Teos (fl. 540 BC).
32. ’80: their language is the pleasantest language in the world; its sound is agreeable to the ear and has terminations…
33. In 1562, when Rouen was retaken by Royalist forces.
1. Plato, Critias, 107B.
2. Horace, Satires, I, ii, 2.
3. The Reformers won at La Rochelabeille (1562) and lost at Jarnac and Moncontour (1569). Both sides attributed their defeats to God’s ‘fatherly’ chastisement, on the authority of II Samuel 7:14 and Hebrews 12:5–6.
4. Don John of Austria’s Catholic Spanish navy won at Lepanto (1571); but the Spanish Invincible Armada was scattered and defeated in 1588, a defeat attributed throughout Protestant Europe to God’s intervention on the side of true religion.
5. Ravisius Textor in his Officina lists under the heading Dead or killed in latrines Heliogabalus and also the martyrs Irenaeus and Albundius who were tossed alive into the latrines by Valerianus, where they died.
6. Cf. St Augustine, City of God, I, viii.
7. Wisdom of Solomon 9:13.
1. Three Greek poetic proverbs; taken it seems from the Greek anthology of Georgica, Bucolica and Gnomica published by Jean Crespin of Geneva about 1570 (copy in Cambridge University Library).
2. Seneca, Epist. moral., XXII, 3.
3. Idem, 14. (That Epicurus was writing to Idomeneus we know from XXI, 7.)
4. From Jean Bouchet, Annales d’Acquitaine, Poitiers, 1557, pp. 16–21.
1. Francesco Guicciardini, L’Historia d’Italia, IV.
2. Catullus, LXVIII, 81–3. (The event is narrated by the Du Bellays in their Mémoires, II.)
3. Jean Bouchet, Annales d’Acquitaine.
4. The Du Bellays’ Mémoires, II. Cf. Simon Goulart, Histoires admirables, 1610–14, IV, p. 686.
5. Both anecdotes derive from Pliny (Hist. nat., VII and XXXV).
6. Cf. Froissart, Histoire et cronique, Lyons, 1559, I, x.
7. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De la tranquillité de l’esprit, p. 70A.
8. Menander (translated in the text).
9. Cf. Plutarch, Life of Timoleon.
10. Appian (of Alexandria), Des guerres civiles des Romains (translated from the Greek by Claude de Seyssel), Lyons, 1544.
1. [A] until [C]: that, among the instructions which fell into his hands, he had wished…
2. Giraldi, famous for his erudite works on the gods of Antiquity and on their burial customs, died in poverty (Ferrara, 1552); Châteillon (Castalio) died in Basle, 1563.
1. The phrase ‘under the sun’ occurs as a refrain in Ecclesiastes (and nowhere else in the Bible). On the beams of his library Montaigne inscribed, ‘Omnium quae sub sole sunt fortuna et lex par est, Eccl.ix.’ [Of everything which is under the sun the fortune and law are equal, Ecclesiastes 9.] The word fortuna occurs but once in the Latin Bible (Isaiah 65). Montaigne’s ‘quotation’ is apparently a loose paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 9:2 (Vulgate), 9:3 (AV), ‘Hoc est pessimum inter omnia quae sub sole fiunt, quia eadem cunctis eveniunt.’ [‘Among all things done under the sun, this is the worst: that the same outcome awaits all men.’] Ecclesiastes stresses that you cannot tell from their earthly fate the good from the bad.
2. Lucretius, IV, 936–7. (The theme of the weakness of man was commonplace. Cf. for a comic use of it, Rabelais, Tiers Livre, VIII.)
3. After Guillaume Postel, the Renaissance authority on the Turks.
4. Cicero, De Senectute, X, 34.
5. Herodotus, III, xii.
6. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Dicts notables des Lac
edaemoniens, 21OF; Pedro Mexia (tr. Gruget), I, xvi; Silius Italicus, De bello punico, I, 250–1.
7. Plato, Laws, XII, 942D.
8. Stephen Bathory.
9. Pliny, Hist, nat., XXVII, 6.
10. Du Bellay, Mémoires, X.
11. Ovid, Tristia, III, X, 23–4. There follow anecdotes from Livy, Xenophon, Diodorus Siculus and Lopez de Gomara.
12. Xenophon, Anabasis, IV.
13. Diodorus Siculus, Alexander, XVII, xviii.
14. Lopez de Gomara (tr. Fumée). Histoire générale des Indes, II, xxxiii.
1. ’80: another man by me and of reducing characteristics of others to my own. I easily believe of others many things which my own powers cannot attain. My own weakness…
2. Montaigne was buried with the religious order of the Feuillants of Bordeaux, to whom his widow entrusted his working copy of the Essays with its [C] additions and changes and which is the basis of the Edition municipale.