The Complete Essays (202 page)

7
. In the great myth of Hesiod, the father of Greek mythology (
Works and Days
, 289), the upward path to Virtue is steep and rugged: once attained, her dwelling-place is a delightful plateau. (Cf. Rabelais,
Quart Livre
, LVII, Joachim Du Bellay,
Regrets
, TLF, 3. 3.) Montaigne is rare in challenging the truth of the myth: most accepted it, often with a Christian sense.

8
. ’80: That is why all
Schools of Philosophy
meet and concur in this one clause,
teaching us to despise it
[i.e., death]. It is true…

9
. The last resort of the Stoic: suicide. (Xenophilus’ longevity was proverbial.)

10
. Horace,
Odes
, II, iii, 25.

11
. Cicero,
De finibus
, I, xviii, 60; Erasmus,
Adages
, II, IX, VII,
Tantali lapis
(a boulder was ever about to fall on Tantalus’ head but never did, keeping him in suspense for all eternity).

12
. [A] until [C]: past
all
fair mansions of
France
, and ply them… (Horace,
Odes
, I, xviii; Claudian,
In Ruffinum
, II, 137.)

13
. Contrast III, 12, in which Montaigne denies that death is the end to which our life aims (its
‘but’
) but merely its ending (
‘bout’
).

14
. Lucretius, IV, 472.

15
. Montaigne believed that
feu
(‘the late’) derived from
fut
(‘he was’). That is a false etymology. But the Romans could indeed say
vixit
(‘he has lived’) to mean, ‘he is dead’ or ‘he has died’.
[B]: They
were happy with
living…

16
. Traditionally the year began at Easter (or thereabouts). Dating the year from the first of January, a Roman practice, was decreed in France in 1565 and generally applied in 1567.

17
. ’80: another
year more
to go…

18
. Christ incarnate was God and Man, immortal as touching his Godhead, mortal as touching his Manhood. (Thirty-three is a traditional age of Christ at the Crucifixion.)

19
. Horace,
Odes
, II, xiii, 13–14.

20
. Lists like these were common in Renaissance compilations and handbooks. Montaigne is partly following here Ravisius Textor’s
Officina
(‘Workshop’). The lecherous Pope was Clement V (early fourteenth century); the French king killed in a tournament (1559) was Henry II; his ancestor killed by a pig was Philip, the crowned son, who never reigned, of Louis the Fat.

21
. Two
exempla
from Pliny, VII, liii.

22
. Horace,
Epistles
, II, ii, 126–8.

23
. Horace,
Epistles
, III, ii, 14–17; Propertius, IV, xviii, 25.

24
. Plutarch (tr. Amyot),
Banquet des Sept Sages
, 1515A.

25
. Horace,
Epistles
, I, iv, 13–14. Then echoes of Seneca’s
Epist. moral.
, I, lxxxviii, 25, and of Plutarch’s
Life of Paulus Aemilius
.

26
. Catullus, LXVIII, 26. On Montaigne’s melancholic humour, which was modified by the sanguine, cf. II, 17. (His comportment corresponds to the symptoms associated with melancholy.)

27
. ’80: fever and
death
, with his head…

28
. Lucretius, III, 195.

29
. Seneca,
Epist. moral.
, XCI, 16.

30
. Horace,
Odes
, II, xvi, 17.

31
. Lucretius, III, 898–9 (Lambin); Virgil,
Aeneid
, IV, 88.

32
. [A] until [C]: for action:
and I am of the opinion that not only an Emperor, as Vespasian said, but any gallant man should die on his feet:
Cum moriar… Then Ovid,
Amores
, II, x, 36.

33
. Lucretius, III, 900.

34
. By ‘churches’ here Montaigne means pagan temples. Then, Silius Italicus,
The Punic War
, XI, li.

35
. Herodotus, II, lxxviii; Erasmus,
Apophthegmata
, VI;
varie mixta
, LXXXIV.

36
. Cicero,
De officiis
, II, V, 16. Dicearchus’ book was called
The Perishing of Human Life
. It has not survived.

37
. ’80: than that.
I realize from experience that
Nature…

38
. Caesar,
Gallic Wars
, VII, lxxxiv.

39
. Pseudo-Gallus,
Elegies
, I, 16. (Like his contemporaries Montaigne attributed to Cornelius Gallus poems later attributed to Maximianus.)

40
. Seneca,
Epist. moral.
, LXXVII, 19. The Emperor was Gaius Caesar (Caligula), not Julius Caesar.

41
. Horace,
Odes
, III, iii, 3–6.

42
. Horace,
Epistles
, I, xvi, 76–9.

43
. St Augustine,
City of God
, I, xi.

44
. Erasmus,
Apophthegmata
, III;
Socratica
, LII.

45
. Cicero,
Tusc. disput.
, I, xxxix, 94.

46
. The main source of what follows is Nature’s soliloquy in Lucretius, III.

47
. Lucretius, II, 76 and 79; cf. Erasmus,
Adages
, I, II, XXXVIII,
Cursu lampada tradunt
.

48
. Seneca (the dramatist),
Hercules furens
, III, 874; Manilius,
Astronomica
, IV, xvi.

49
. Lucretius, III, 938; 941–2.

50
. Seneca,
Epist. moral.
, XCIX, 12.

51
. Manilius cited by Vives (Commentary on St Augustine’s
City of God
, XI, iv).

52
. ’80: Its
role
is done…

53
. Lucretius, III, 1080; Virgil,
Georgics
, II, 402; Lucretius, III, 944–5.

54
. Seneca,
Epist. moral.
, XXX, 11.

55
. Lucretius, III, 1090 (within a wider Lucretian context); III, 885 (adapted); III, 919; 922; 926.

56
. Seneca,
Epist. moral.
, LXIX, 6; then Lucretius, III, 972–3.

57
. Several echoes of Seneca:
Epist. moral.
, LXXVII, 20, 13 (etc.); XLIX; LXI, LXXVII. Then, Lucretius, III, 968.

58
. ’80: same
hour
that you die…
Further borrowings, Seneca,
Epist. moral.
, LXXVII.

59
. Lucretius, II, 578–80.

60
. Nature is still speaking and the inspiration is still Senecan; cf.
Epist. moral.
, XCIII, 2 ff.

61
. Cf. Lucian,
Dialogues of the Dead
, XXVI; Ovid,
Metamorphoses
, II, 649 ff.

62
. Diogenes Laertius,
Life of Thales
, XXX.

63
. Seneca,
Epist. moral.
, CVII, and CXX. The entire speech of Nature, who adds her arguments to Reason’s in support of ‘our religion’s contempt for life’ is a patchwork of quotation, at first from Lucretius and subsequently from Seneca.

64
. Seneca,
Epist. moral.
, XXIV, 14.

65
. [A] until [C]: Blessed,
and thrice blessed
, the death… (Doubtless an echo of Aeneas’ evocation in Virgil,
Aeneid
, I, 94.)

1
. Medieval philosophical axiom. Cf. the scholastic dictionary of Erasmus Sarcerius.

2
. ’80: Everyone is
struck
by it, but some are
transformed…

3
. [’95] adds that this event took place in Toulouse. The following
exemplum
concerns Gallus Vibius, an orator; his case is recorded by Marcus Annaeus Seneca (the rhetorician):
Controversiae
, 9, and was well-known from such compendia as Ravisius Textor’s
Officina
(s.v.
maniaci et furiosi
) and Coelius Richerius Rhodiginus’
Antiquae Lectiones
, VI, 35.

4
. Lucretius, IV, 1035–6.

5
. Pliny, XI, xlv.

6
. Current examples drawn from Lucian, the
Goddess of Syria
, I; Pliny, VII, iv; then, for Iphis, the Cretan girl who became a youth, Ovid,
Metamorphoses
, IX, 793 ff – For
Antiochus
, until [C],
Antigonus
(wrongly). Pontanus is Johannes Jovinianus Pontanus, a Renaissance scholar and philosopher.

7
. Episode related in Montaigne’s
Journal de Voyage
for September 1580.

8
. Robert Burton later cites these examples, which Henry Cornelius Agrippa ‘supposeth to have happened by force of imagination’
(Anatomy of Melancholy
, Part I, Sect. 2, Memb. 3, Subsection 2)

9
. H. C. Agrippa,
De occulta philosophia
, I, lxiv.

10
. St Augustine,
City of God
, XIV, xxiv. The priest was called Restitutus. These
exempla
are in Coelius Richerius Rhodiginus,
Antiquae Lectiones
, XX, xvi.

11
. Some scholars, as well as popular superstition, attributed such impotence to diabolical magic.

12
. [A], replaced by [C]: A body
from
elsewhere.
For the man who has time to compose himself and to recover from this trouble, my advice is that he should divert his mind to other thoughts (if he can, for it is difficult) and that he should escape from such ardour and tension of imagination. I know of some who have found it useful to bring to the job a body which they had quietened and tamed elsewhere. And in the case of the man who is frightened of an attack of magic impotence, you should extricate him by persuading him that you can furnish him with counter-enchantments of miraculous and certain effect. But it is also requisite that the women whom one may legitimately approach should drop these ritual and affected manners of severity and refusal, and that they should constrain themselves a little to conform to the exigencies of our wretched century. For
the heart of an attacker…

13
. Such magico-medical medallions were favoured by Ficino and other Renaissance Platonists. Jacques Peletier, the mathematician, is mentioned again in ‘An apology for Raymond Sebond’. Among his Latin treatises on mathematics is one
On the meeting of lines
(1579) and one on the mystical meanings of numbers (1560).

14
. Herodotus, II, clxxxi.

15
. Cf. Plutarch (tr. Amyot),
Preceptes de mariage
, VIII.

16
. [A] (instead of [C]): arise,
and this fearfulness increases and redoubles on all subsequent occasions: and without some counter-mine you cannot easily get the better of it
. One man, perhaps…

17
. St Augustine,
City of God
, XIV, xxiv, incorporating the comments of Vives.

18
. ’95: death.
And would to God that I knew only from the history books how often our stomach, by the refusing of one single fart, may bring us to the very gates of a most excruciating death. And if only that Emperor who gave us liberty to fart in any place had also given us the power to do so!
Yet against…
The Emperor who intended to make this decree was Claudius.

19
. Since the ‘consort’ (the female organ) has no erections.
’95:
For the action of the aforesaid is sometimes to invite inopportunely but never to refuse, inviting moreover wordlessly and quietly
. By which…

20
. Love (Eros, Cupid) is a
daemon
in Plato’s
Symposium
.

21
. Until the eighteenth century the Kings of France (and of England) were credited with the power to cure scrofula (the ‘King’s evil’).