The Complete Essays (206 page)
Read The Complete Essays Online
Authors: Michel de Montaigne
Tags: #Essays, #Philosophy, #Literary Collections, #History & Surveys, #General
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
, II
a
, II
ac
, 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.
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.
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.
