’95: gunpowder, which were in the place where they were kept. Here we have now…
331. Petrarch, Canzoniere, XXII, 48.
’88: effectively and who would have used, in piling up his case, other authors besides our Plutarch. When… (Cf. Erasmus’ adages Ne quid nimis and Medium sequere.)
332. Epicurus, cf. p. 543; Plato, Laws, 874 (tr. Ficino, p. 862).
333. R. Sebond is a prophylactic against the ‘poison’ of Lutheranism (see p. 490 ff). The rest of the Apology uses scepticism as the ultimate defence of Catholicism.
’88: a dangerous sword…
334. Cicero, Tusc. disput. II, ii.
335. Cf. H. C. Agrippa, De Vanitate, I.
336. Ovid, Metam., X, 284.
337. Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xli, 128 (adapted).
338. Ovid, Tristia, I, ii, 5.
339. ’88: more true and more firm. For…
340. St Augustine advanced such arguments against Academic theories of probability (Contra academicos, e.g., II, 7); they had long been current.
341. Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxviii, 90.
342. From here Montaigne takes on Lucretius, the defender of the senses as true guides. Cf. Introduction, p. xxxv ff. He relies mainly on his own experience, in sickness and in health, against which he judges the established Classical authorities.
343. Lucretius, V, 1414 (Lambin, pp. 462–3 – explained with Montaigne’s sense).
344. Plutarch, Les Dicts notables des Lacedaemoniens, 218 C; also a general influence of Pyrrhonism (Hypotyposes, I, xxxii, 217–19 etc.). Chagrin was a technical word for melancholic depression.
345. Homer, Odyssey, XVIII, 135, translated by Cicero, apud St Augustine, City of God, V, 8. (Montaigne has already cited this in II, I, ‘On the inconstancy of our actions’.)
346. Horace, Odes, I, xxvi, 3.
347. ’88: does not always get better, but floats and rolls about… (Catullus, XXV, 12.)
348. Cf. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, De la Vertu Morale, 37 F–G.
349. Cicero, Tusc., disput., IV, xxiii; the rest of [C] follows closely ibid., xix. For the role of passion and anger in bravery, cf. Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, III, 15–19, 1229a.
350. ‘80 (in place of [B]): stimulus to liberality and justice…
351. Cicero, Tusc. disput., V, vi.
’88 (in place of [C]): actions? At least we know only too well that the passions produce innumerable and ceaseless changes in our soul and tyrannize over it wondrously; is the judgement of an angry man or a fearful one the same judgement as he will have later when he has calmed down? What varied…
352. The ideal of tranquillity of mind is indeed, for Platonizing philosophers, subordinated to visions, dreams and philosophical ecstasy; cf. Rabelais, Tiers Livre, TLF, XIIII and XXXVII.
353. That is, philosophical ecstasy cannot claim to reveal infallible truth. Montaigne proceeds to emphasize the ‘asinine’ aspect of his own melancholy complexion (an antidote to all melancholic ecstasies).
354. Virgil, Aeneid, XI, 624.
355. Plutarch, De la face qui apparoist dedans le rond de la Lune, 615 E; Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxxix, 123 (reading Nicetas for Hicetas). Montaigne’s three thousand years means from the Creation (dated about 4000 BC) to the time of Cleanthes and Nicetas.
356. The theory of Copernicus ‘saved the appearances’ as did that of Ptolemy: but Galileo later claimed to describe reality.
357. Lucretius, V, 1276 (Lambin, pp. 454–5).
358. Paracelsus (1493–1541). His works appeared posthumously (1575–88). He scorned traditional medicine absolutely.
359. Peletier, a poet and mathematician, doubtless explained the conic hyperbola and asymptotes (lines which draw ever nearer to a given curve but do not meet it within a finite distance). He was actively opposed to the renewal of Pyrrhonism.
360. Cicero suspended judgement over the Antipodes (Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxxix, 123); St Augustine rejected the idea (City of God, XVI, 9); but it never was heretical to believe in them.
361. Lucretius, V, 1412, (Lambin, pp. 462–3).
362. ’88 (in place of [C]): saying now? Aristotle says that all human opinions have existed in the past and will do so in the future an infinite number of other times: Plato, that they are to be renewed and come back into being after thirty-six thousand years. Epicurus… (Taken from Varchi, L’Hercolano. Montaigne replaced this with authorities taken from St Augustine or thought of because of him.)
363. Plato, Politicus, XIII, 270 AC; cf. St Augustine, City of God, XII, 14.
364. Herodotus, II, 142–3 (cf. St Augustine, City of God, XII, 13; J. Bodin, Methodus ad Hist. cognit., 1595, p. 293).
365. Origen, De Princ, 3, 5, 3; cf. St Augustine, City of God, XII, 14 (citing Solomon and Ecclesiastes; Isaiah is in the notes of Vivès), and XI, 23. The doctrine of a Creator who had not yet created was rejected by Neo-Platonists such as Proclus.
366. Plato, in the Timaeus, 33D–41E.
367. Texts cited after St Augustine, City of God, VIII, 5; XII, 10, 11, including the notes of Vivès.
368. Plutarch, Des oracles qui ont cessé, 342 D.
369. All the above compiled from Lopez de Gomara, L’Histoire générale des Indes.
370. A regular theme for reflection. Cf. J. Bodin, Methodus, V.
371. Vegetius, I, ii, apud Justus Lipsius, Politicorum, V, 10.
372. Cicero, De fato, IV, 7.
373. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Les Dicts notables des Anciens Roys… 188E; Herodotus, IX, 121. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, Cyrus Major, II.
374. Juvenal, Sat., X. 4.
375. Xenophon, Memorabilia, II, iii, 2: Plato, Alcibiades, II, 148 B–C.
’88: That is why the Christian, wiser and more humble and more aware of what he is, refers himself to his Creator to choose and command what he needs. Conjugium…
376. Juvenal, Sat., X, 352. Then [B]: he says… done’ and may chance not to…
377. The Lord’s Prayer (‘Thy will be done’) glossed with Ovid, Metam., XI, 128.
378. Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, xlvii.
379. Psalm 23 (22): 4; Juvenal, Sat., X, 346.
380. Xenophon, Memorabilia, I, iii, 2.
381. St Augustine, City of God, XIX, I – also exploited in the following paragraphs. (ibid., 1–4).
382. Cicero, De fin., V, v, 14.
383. Horace, Ep., II, ii, 61.
384. Cicero, De fin., V, v, 14, citing Hieronymus, the pupil of Aristotle.
385. Horace, Ep., I, vi, I.
386. Greatness of Soul is the subject of Nicomachaean Ethics, IV, iii, and of Eudemian Ethics, III, v (1232a f.).
387. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xxxiii, 223–34 (for Archesilas), I, iv, 8; vi, 12; xii, 25–30 (for Ataraxia).
388. Justus Lipsius, the neo-Stoic moralist (1547–1606) was read by Montaigne and admired by him. After a period of conforming to Protestantism he became a Roman Catholic fundamentalist. For Turnebus, see pp. 157 and 491.
389. ’88: country, as Socrates’ oracle had taught him, that to do punctiliously one’s duty of piety according to the uses of one’s nation is equivalent to serving God. But…
390. Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics, V, vii, 1–3. Cf. La Boëtie on p. 219.
391. Allusion to religious settlements by Parliaments under Henry VIII, Edward VI, Bloody Mary and Elizabeth I.
392. Allusions to changing alliances and legitimacies in the French Wars of Religion.
393. Apollo (n. 389 above); Xenophon, Memorabilia, I, iii, I.
394. The conviction of Lambin also; cf. Introduction, p. xxxv ff.
395. Cf. Erasmus, The Complaint of Peace (Opera, 1703–1706, IV, 628 DE).
396. Aristotle’s doctrine of Natural Law came in for increased criticism as new peoples were discovered, but also because of inner inconsistencies; cf. Jeremy Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, 1660, p. 221.
397. Protagoras was allegedly banished for atheistic impiety: Cicero, De nat. deorum, I, xxiii, 63; Ariston of Chios was a Stoic inclined to
cynicism; Thrasimacus, in Plato, Republic, 338 (Ficino, p. 535).
398. Ovid. Metam., X, 331, in Tiraquellus, De legibus connubialibus, VII, 38. For context cf. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, III, xxiv, 203–17.
399. Cicero: De fin., V, xxi, 60 (now parsed differently).
400. Cf. ‘On habit: and on never easily changing a traditional law’, I, 23, after Herodotus, III, xii, etc.
401. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, III, xxiv, 204.
402. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, Aristippus V and I.
403. Virgil, Aeneid, III, 539.
404. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Solon, I, lxiii, 53; Erasmus, Apophthegmata: Socratica LIII.
’88 (in place of [C]):From this diversity of aspects there arises the fact that judgements are variously applied to the choice of objects.
405. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, III, xxiv, 200–203.
406. Juvenal, Sat., XV, 36.
407. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Les Regies et preceptes de Santd, 295 DE (condemning all vicious sexuality).
408. Cicero, Tusc. disput., V, xxxiii, 94; De fin., III, xx, 68; Seneca, Epist. CXXIII, 15 (condemning Stoic indiscretions); Cicero, Tusc. disput., IV, xxxiv, 71. Dicaearchus reproached Plato for his Symposium and Phaedrus; Montaigne takes all these quotations as allusions to irregular affaires; Marie de Gournay translates amores sanctos by amours illicites (‘illicit love-affaires’) which is, I think, the sense.
‘95 ‘98, etc.: for Dicaearchus, ‘Diogarchus’.
409. ’88: rejected. Everyone had heard tell of the shameless way of life of the Cynic philosophers. Chrysippus…
410. Cf. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Contredicts des philosophes Stoïques, 569 B (‘In the VIIth Book of his Offices he goes further, saying he will do a somersault three times, provided he be given a talent.’).
’88 (in place of [C]): breeches off. And that ‘honesty’ and ‘reverence’, as we call them, which make us hasten to hide some of our natural and rightful actions, not to dare to call things by their name or to fear to mention things we are allowed to do, could they not be said to be a guileful wantonness, invented in Venus’ own chambers so as to give more value and stimulus to her games? Is it not an allurement, a bait and a stimulus to voluptuousness? For usage makes us evidently feel that ceremony, modesty and difficulties are means of sharpening and inflaming such fevers as those. That is why some say…
411. Herodotus, VI, cxxix; Aelian, Var. hist., XII, 24.
412. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VII, Crates Thebananus Cynicus, XVII.
413. Martial, III, lxx.
414. Martial, I, lxxiv, cited Tiraquellus, De legibus connubialibus, XVI, II.
415. Source unknown.
’88: planting cabbages. Solon is said to have been the first to give women freedom in his Laws to profit publicly from their bodies. And the philosophical school which most honoured Virtue did not in short impose any bridle on the practising of lust of all sorts except moderation… (Transferred by Montaigne to III, 5, ‘On some lines of Virgil’.)
416. St Augustine, City of God, XIV, 20 (defending the notion that shame is natural); Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Diogenes, VI, lxix and lviii (cf. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, III, Diogenes Cynicus, XLVII) and Lives, Hipparchia, VI, cxvi. The same associations, with additional material, are found in Tiraquellus, De legibus connubialibus, XV, 159.
417. Cf. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xxix, 210–11; xxxii, 218; Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, vi, 79. (The refraction of a ‘bent oar’ was a major argument for sceptics.) Cf. I, 14, note 71.
418. Cf. Rabelais, Gargantua, TLF, Prologue, 87 f.
’88 (in place of [C]): like. Homer is as great as you wish, but it is not possible that he intended to represent as many ideas as people attribute to him. Law-givers have divined in him instructions without number for their own concerns; so have military men; so have those who treat of the arts. Anyone on the…
419. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xxx, 213–14. What follows is from Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxiv, 76; xlvi, 142.
420. Plato, cited Cicero (note 419), and Theaetetus, 186: knowledge is not in sensation but in reasoning upon sensation. Truth is ‘perceived’, not apprehended; it is not attainable from ‘opinion’.
421. Lucretius, V, 102 (Lambin, p. 382).
422. Lucretius, IV, 478, 482 (Lambin, pp. 308–11). This section of Lucretius is aimed at anyone who dares to think that ‘nothing is known’ (nil sciri); Lucretius, 469 ff. This fact lends piquancy to what follows: Montaigne, like Carneades, is about to use his opponent’s weapons against him.
423. Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxvii, 87 and Plutarch, Contredicts des philosophes Stoïques, 562H–563A.
424. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xiv, 96–7. The whole of this section (36–163) forms the background to these pages.
425. Lucretius, IV, 486, 490.
426. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xiv, 95–6.
427. These’qualities were classified as ‘sympathies’ and ‘antipathies’ within nature and were fundamental to Renaissance science; cf. G. Fracastoro, De sympathia et antipathia rerum, 1554. For the magnet, cf. Rabelais, Quart Livre, TLF, LXII; for animals recognizing medical simples, ibid., LXII (drawing on Plutarch and Celio Calcagnini).
428. Seneca, Epist., CXXI, 19.
429. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xxix, 210–11.
430. Lucretius, V, 577 (of the Moon, not the Sun; but the section starts (564) ‘Nec nimio solis major rota’ [The wheel of the Sun cannot be much larger than as perceived by our senses]). Lambin (p. 410) classes as ‘the most stolid and silly of the opinions of Epicurus that the Sun, Moon and Stars have the size they appear to have.’ He cites Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxxix, 124 (cf. Introduction, p. xli and Cicero, ibid., xxvi, 82).
431. Lucretius, IV, 379;386. (Lambin, pp. 300–2, explains: ‘Lucretius says that, if we are deceived in our seeing things, that is a defect of our minds, not of our eyes… For Epicurus wished the senses to be certain and true; see Cicero [Acad.] Lucullus, II [142 f.]; later we add material from Lucretius himself.’)
432. Cicero, Acad., Lucullus, II, xxv, 79–80; for the importance of the contention, cf. Aristotle, Metaph., XI, vi, 7 (1063a), a criticism of ‘Man as measure’ which, if accepted, would imply the truth of the notions for which Lucretius is to be cited – with disapproval.
433. Lucretius, IV, 499 (Lambin, pp. 300–2).
434. Cicero, Acad.: Lucullus, II, xxxii, 101.
435. Lucretius, IV, 397; 389; 421 (Lambin, pp. 300–2; but in 390 reading praeter as propter); ‘defects of the mind are not defects of the senses’.
436. ’88: of religious reverence…
437. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VII, Zeno, XXIV.
438. Attributed by Diogenes Laertius to Arcesilas (Lives, IV, xxxvi, 270).
439. Ovid, Remedia amoris, 343. (‘From the ocean’: that is, from pulverized sea–shells, used as face ‘powder’.)
440. Ovid, Metam, III, 424; X, 256.
441. Livy, XLIV, 6.
442. Democritus (whom Montaigne already mentions in I, 14: ‘That the taste of good and evil things depends in large part on the opinion we have of them’, and I, 39: ‘On solitude’). Cf. Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, X, xvii; Cicero, De fin., V, xxix, 87 (hesitating to believe it).
443. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Comment il fault oh, 24H–25A.
444. Cicero, De divinat, XXXVI, 80.
445. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Comment il fault refrener la colere, 57H–58A.
446. Virgil, Aeneid, IV, 470.
447. Lucretius, IV, 1155 (Lambin, pp. 358–9).
448. Lucretius, IV, 811 (Lambin, pp. 331–3, citing Cicero, Tusc. disput., in support).
449. Cf. Rabelais, Quart Livre, TLF, LXIV, derived from Celio Calcagnini.
450. Lucretius, IV, 636 (Lambin, p. 619)
451. Pliny, Hist. Nat…, XXXII, I.
452. Lucretius, IV, 333 (Lambin, pp. 296–7).
453. Medical deformation of hyposphagma; cited after Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xiv,
45. The following is from ibid., 45–7.
454. Lucretius, IV, 450 (Lambin, pp. 305–7, who alludes to Aristotle, Problemata, 3, for the explanation); Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, 47; Plato, Theatetus, 153b–154a.
455. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xiv, 50–1.
456. Lucretius, IV, 74 (Lambin, pp. 278–81) reading volitare for fluitare.
457. Cf. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xiv, 78–9; 106.
458. Ibid., I, xiii, 33–34.
’88: acute. Sick people lend a bitter taste to sweet things; from which it transpires that we do not receive things as they are but, like this or that… (From Aristotle, Metaph., IV, v, 27 – dropped as a repetition).
459. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xiii, 91–2.
460. Ibid., I, xiv, 48–9; Seneca, Quaest. Nat., I, xvi.
461. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, xiv, 33; Lucretius, III, 703 (Lambin, pp. 237–8).
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