The Complete Essays (121 page)

[They have no wish to dodge, to parry nor to make tactical retreats: skill has no part to play in their encounter; they make no feints, nor blows oblique, nor shamming lunges; anger and fury strips them of their art. Just listen to the terrifying clash of striking swords, iron against iron; no foot gives way but stays ever planted firm: it is their arms which move; every thrust strikes home and no blows fall in vain.]
¹¹

Our forebears’ training was a true image of martial combat: target-practice, tournaments and the tilting-yard; that other skill is all the more ignoble in that it has nothing but a private end, teaching us to destroy each other against all law and justice and, whatever else happens, always producing harmful effects. It is much more meet and right to practise such arts as defend our polity not those which undermine it, such as have regard for national security and the glory of the common weal.

Publius Rutilius when consul was the first to train soldiers in handling their weapons with skill and technique and to couple art and valour:
¹²
but that was for the wars and contentions of the Roman People – [C] official fencing for citizens in common. And, leaving aside Caesar’s example when he ordered his men to aim principally at the faces of Pompey’s men during the battle of Pharsalia, hundreds of other leaders of men in war have
decided to employ new kinds of weapons and new ways of attack and defence according to the exigencies of the moment.
¹³
[B] But just as Philopoemen condemned wrestling (in which he excelled) because the basic skills learned in that sport were quite different from those which appertain to military training on which alone he reckoned that men of honour should spend their time, it seems to me also that those feints and tricks and that agility which young men acquire for their limbs in this new-fangled school are not merely useless for fighting wars but are hostile and harmful to it. [C] Moreover people today normally use special weapons, specifically destined for fencing; I have noticed that it is hardly considered proper that a gentleman challenged to sword and dagger should turn up armed like a soldier.

It is worth considering that in Plato, Laches, talking about a kind of apprenticeship in weapon-training just like ours today, says that he has never seen any great soldier come out of such a school – and especially not from among the instructors!
¹⁴
(As for that lot, our own experience teaches us the same!) We can also certainly at least assert that we are dealing with accomplishments which are quite unrelated and distinct. And in this system of education for the boys of his Republic Plato forbids fisticuffs (which was introduced by Amycus and Epeius) as well as wrestling (introduced by Antaeus and Cercyo) since they have some other aim than rendering youth more apt for service in war and contribute nothing to it. [B] But I am wandering away from my theme.

[A] The Emperor Maurice,
¹⁵
having been warned by his dreams and several omens that he was to be killed by a certain Phocas, a soldier then unknown to him, inquired of his son-in-law Philip who this Phocas was, what he was like and how he behaved; when Philip told him that Phocas was among other things cowardly and fearful, the Emperor straightway concluded from this that he was therefore murderous and cruel. What is it that makes tyrants so lust for blood? It is their worries about their own safety and the fact that when they fear a scratch their cowardly minds can furnish them with no other means of security save exterminating all those who simply have the means of hurting them, women included.

    [B]
Cuncta ferit, dum cuncta timet
.
[Fearing all, he strikes at all.]
¹⁶

[C] The first acts of cruelty are done for their own sake; from them there is born fear of a just revenge; that produces a succession of fresh cruelties, each intended to smother each other. Philip, King of Macedon, who had many a crossed thread to untangle with the Roman People, was shaken with terror by the murders committed on his orders; since he could not find a means of delivering himself from so many families harmed at various times, he decided to seize all the children of those he had put to death so as to kill them off, one by one, day after day… and so find rest.

Beautiful topics can always hold their own, no matter where you strew them. I who am more concerned with the weight and usefulness of my writings than with their order and logical succession must not be afraid to place here, a little off the track, an account of great beauty.
¹⁷
Among the others condemned by Philip there was a certain Herodicus, Prince of the Thessalians. After him it was the turn of his two sons-in-law to be killed, each leaving a baby son. Their widows were called Theoxena and Archo. Theoxena was much courted but could not be brought to remarry. Archo married the leading man among the Aenians called Poris and had a number of sons by him who were all young when she died. Theoxena, feeling the urge to mother her nephews, wedded Poris. Then the King’s edict was proclaimed. That courageous mother, fearing both the cruelty of Philip and the abusive lust of his underlings, boldly stated that she would kill them with her own hands rather than hand them over. Poris was terrified by this declaration of hers and promised to steal secretly away with them to Athens and place them under the protection of some of his faithful vassals. Taking advantage of a yearly feast celebrated in Aenia in honour of Aeneas, they set about it. After being present during the daytime at the ceremonies and the public banquet, they slipped away by night to a ship which was waiting to put some space between them. But there was a contrary wind; the following morning they were still in sight of the land where they had left their moorings and were pursued by the harbour-guards. When they were overhauled, while Poris was busy urging the sailors to flee faster Theoxena, raving mad with love for the children and for vengeance, returned to her original plan; she got weapons and poison ready; she then showed them to them saying, ‘Come now, my children; from henceforth death is your sole means of defence and of remaining free;
and it will provide the gods with something to work their hallowed justice upon. These drawn swords and these goblets open the way to it for you. Be brave. And you, my oldest son, grasp this blade and die the bolder death.’ The children, with this staunch counsellor on one side and the enemy at their throats on the other, frantically ran to whatever goblet was nearest to hand and were thrown still half-dead into the sea. Theoxena, proud of having so gloriously saved all her children, threw her arms passionately round her husband and said, ‘Let us follow these boys, my love, and let us enjoy the same grave with them.’ Clasped thus in each other’s embrace, they plunged headlong into the sea. And so that boat was brought back to land empty of its masters.

[A] Tyrants, to do two things at once (killing, and making their anger felt), have exhausted their ingenuity in inventing means of prolonging the death. They want to do in their enemies all right, but not so quickly that they have no time to spare for savouring their vengeance. In this they are greatly perplexed; for if the tortures are intense they are short: if they are long they are not painful enough to their liking; so they have to tread carefully with machinery of torture.

We can see hundreds of examples of this in Antiquity – and I wonder whether we do not still retain traces of such barbarity without our realizing it. Everything which goes beyond mere death seems to me to be cruelty. Our justice cannot hope that a man who will not be kept from wrongdoing by fear of death on the block or the gallows may yet be deterred by the thought of pincers or a slow fire or the racking-wheel. And for all I know, during this time we drive them to despair: for in what state can a man’s soul be as he lies waiting for death for twenty-four hours, broken on the wheel, or in the Ancient fashion nailed to a cross? Josephus relates how, during the Roman wars in Judaea, he was passing by the place where some Jews had been crucified three days before, when he recognized three of his friends and was allowed to take them away. ‘Two of them died,’ he says, ‘and the other is still alive.’
¹⁸

[C] Chalcocondylas, a reliable man, left memoirs of events which happened in his Own time and near where he was; in them he relates as the ultimate in punishments the practice of the Emperor Mahomet who, with one blow from a scimitar, often had men sliced in two through their middle just above the abdomen so that they died as it were two deaths at once; ‘And,’ he adds, ‘you could see both parts, still alive long afterwards, twitching and writhing in torment.’ I am not convinced that those twitchings
imply much pain. Tortures which are most ghastly to see are not always the harshest to suffer. More atrocious I find are the accounts in other historians of what he did to some of the noblemen of Epirus: he had them flayed alive, bit by bit, following a procedure so evilly devised that, for a whole fortnight, they lived to endure such anguish.
¹⁹

And there are those two others as well: Croesus, having seized one of his brother’s intimate supporters called Pantaleon, dragged him off to a wool-carder’s shop where he had him so excoriated with the carder’s combs and teasles that he died from it;
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George Sechel (the leader of those Polish peasants who wrought such havoc under the pretext of a Crusade) was defeated and captured in battle by the Voivode of Transylvania; he was strapped for three days, naked, to a wooden rack and subjected to every kind of torture which anyone at all could devise for him. During this time the other prisoners were given neither food nor drink. In the end, while he was still alive and able to see it, they compelled his dear brother Lucat to quench his thirst in his blood (but he went on praying for Lucat’s safety, taking upon himself all the hatred aroused by their crimes); then they made twenty of his most intimate captains eat him, tearing at his flesh with their bare teeth and swallowing it down. Once he was dead they boiled his remaining flesh and entrails and gave it to others of his followers to eat.

28. There is a season for everything

[Marcus Porcius Cato, the elder, surnamed
Censorius (
the Censor) was, since Classical times, associated with his descendant, also called Marcus Porcius Cato (who fought against Julius Caesar and killed himself after his defeat at Pharsalia). Both were cited as twin examples of great patriotism, sound judgement and stem morality. (Cf. Erasmus’ adage
, Tertius Cato.)
Montaigne shows considerable originality here in his criticism of the Elder Cato (the Censor): in the Renaissance, that Cato’s learning of Greek in his old age was normally held up as an example to be followed. For Montaigne, the Younger Cato’s suicide was one of the highest peaks that philosophical (as distinct from theological) morality could reach.]

[A] Those who compare Cato the Censor to the Younger Cato, the self-murderer,
¹
[C] are indeed comparing two beautiful natures with closely similar souls. Cato the Censor displayed his nature in many more of its aspects and outstrips the younger in military exploits and in the usefulness of his service to the public. But as for the virtue of the Younger Cato, apart from the fact that it is sacrilege to compare its living fortitude to that of anyone else’s whatsoever, his was far more pure. For could anyone absolve the Censor’s virtue from its load of envy and ambition, seeing that he dared to attack the honour of Scipio, who in goodness and in all excellent endowments far excelled him and all other men of his time? [A] What they tell of Cato the Censor, that among other things, when he was well advanced in years, he set about learning Greek with a burning craving as though he were satisfying some long-felt thirst, does not seem to me to be greatly to his honour. That is exactly what we mean by tumbling into second childhood. There is a season for all things – all, including the good: even my Lord’s Prayer may be said at an inappropriate time, [C] as was the case of Titus Quintius Flaminius who was arraigned because, as general of the army, he had been seen
when the fighting began, to draw apart to pray to God in a battle (which he won).
²

[B]
Imponit finem sapiens et rebus honestis
.

[The wise man sets limits even to things which are good.]

[A] When Eudomidas saw Xenocrates working hard at his school lessons when he was very old he remarked: ‘When will this man know anything if he is still learning!’ [B] As Philopoemen said to those who were singing the praises of King Ptolomy for daily strengthening his body by the practice of arms: ‘It is not very praiseworthy in a king of his age to be practising arms: he should be really using them now!’

[A] ‘Youth should make provisions: Old Age should enjoy them,’ say the wise.
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And the greatest flaw which they find in our nature is that our desires are for ever renewing their youth. We are constantly beginning our lives all over again. Our zeal and our desire should sometimes smell of old age. We already have one foot in the grave yet our tastes and our pursuits are always just being born.

[B]
Tu secanda marmora
Locas sub ipsum funus, et sepulchri
Immemor, struis domos
.

[You go cutting marble and are about to die: yet you forget your own tomb and start building houses.]
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[C] The longest of my projects are for less than a year; I think only of bringing things to a close; I free myself from all fresh hopes and achievements; I say my last farewell to all the places I am leaving and daily rid myself of my belongings.
‘Olim jam nec perit quicquam mihi nec acquiritur… Plus superest viatici quam vice.’
[I have long since ceased to lose or gain: I have more rations than road left.]

Vixi, et quem dederat cursum fortuna peregi
.
[I am dead: I have run the course which Fortune gave.]

In short all the comfort I find in my old age is that it deadens within me
many of the desires and worries which trouble our lives: worry about the way the world is going; worry about money, honours, erudition, health… and me. [A] Cato the Censor was learning to talk just when he ought to be learning to shut up forever. [C] We can always continue our studies but not our
school-work
: what a stupid thing is an old man learning his alphabet!

[B]
Diversos diversa juvant, non omnibus annis
Omnia conveniunt
.

[Divers men, divers tastes: nor are all things fit for all ages.]
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[A] If study we must, let us study something suitable to our circumstances, so that we can make the same reply as that man who was asked what use were his studies in decrepit old age: ‘That I may better and more happily leave it behind,’ he said.
⁶

Such when he felt his end was near was the study of the Younger Cato, which brought him to Plato’s discussion of the immortality of the soul. Not (as we must believe) that he was not long since furnished with every sort of provision for his soul’s departure: of assurance, resolute will and preparedness he had more than did Plato in his writings: his knowledge and his heart were in this respect above philosophy. He occupied himself thus, not so as to help himself die but as one who would not even trouble his sleep by dwelling on the importance of such reflections; he continued his studies, as he did all the customary activities of his life, neither chopping nor changing.

[C] The night the Praetorship was refused him he spent in play: the night he was destined to die, he spent in reading. It was all one to him whether he lost life or office.