The Complete Essays (228 page)
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Authors: Michel de Montaigne
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135
. Brantôme relates a case of a French nobleman who poisoned his wife through her genitals in the hope of marrying another woman (
Dames galantes
, ed. M. Rat, Paris, 1947, pp. 14–15).
136
. ’88: We owe them
hardly anything
…
137
. Cato, in Livy, XXIV, iv; then, Ovid,
Amores
, III, iv, 13–14.
138
. ’88: freedom.
They are, in their social life, ladies of many parts. We put them on the way to using the ultimate one, since we rate them all the same
. Both run…
139
. Also called
Sarmatae;
cf. Herodotus, IV, cxvii; Coelius Richerius Rhodiginus,
Antiquae lectiones
, IX, xii, who assimilates them to the Amazons.
140
. Erasmus
(Apophthegmata
, III,
Aristippus
, XIII), who adds a caution, restricting the saying to legitimate relationships.
141
. Implied in Plato’s
Symposium
.
142
. ’88: voracity
and hunger
, which…
145
. Jacques de Lavardin,
Scanderbeg
; cf. Tiraquellus,
De legibus connubialibus
, IX, 99.
146
. Plato,
Laws
, XI, 925 A.
147
. Martial,
Epigrams
, VII, lvii, 3–5.
148
. Catullus, LXVII, 27–8.
149
. Virgil,
Georgics
, III, 127 (adapted).
150
. Horace:
Epodes
, XII, 15; then,
Odes
, II, iv, 22–4. The text of ’95 reads
undenum
, not
heu denum
, that is, ‘fifty-five’, not ‘alas fifty’. Horace wrote
octavum
(forty). Horace is counting by five-year units
(lustra)
.
151
. Allusion to the proverb (listed by Cotgrave): A whore’s love is but straw on fire (
Amour de putain, feu d’estoupe)
.
154
. Cicero,
De petitione consulates
, xiv. Montaigne’s manuscript jottings at this point, eventually crossed out, show that he was aware of going beyond the limits of decency which he had set himself in his Preface: that was because he had been emboldened by the welcome given to his book.
155
. A line from the erotic
Juvenilia
of Theodore Beza, the great Reformer and successor to Calvin. The next is by Mellin de Saint-Gelais, a Roman Catholic cleric and court poet.
156
. Catullus, LXVIII, 145.
157
. Horace,
Odes
, I, v, 13–16; then, Terence,
The Eunuch
, I, i, 16–18.
158
. Seneca,
Epist. moral.
, XCV, 33 (that is, one vice leads to another).
159
. Ibid., CXVI, 5. (Panaetius was a Stoic.)
160
. Erasmus,
Apophthegmata
, I,
Agesilaus
, XIX; Plutarch (tr. Amyot),
Dicts notables des Lacedaemoniens
, 210 EF (when duty required Agesilaus to leave a sick friend).
161
. Juvenal,
Satires
, I, 26–8.
162
. Xenophon,
Symposium
, IV, 27–8. Socrates was consulting a book-scroll with Cleinias, bare shoulder to bare shoulder. Sage though he was, he was disturbed for five days as though he had been bitten by a wild beast. In his innocence he did not realize why, until Charmides twitted him about it.
163
. ’88: human souls,
in rule and
in its re-formation…
Socrates, as he told Zopyrus the physiognomist, had been born with a vicious, lecherous inferior ‘form’ (soul), but had re-formed it.
164
. The Classic Aristotelian teaching (e.g.
Nicomachaean Ethics
, II, vii, 3; VIII, 2 ff.; III, x–xii, etc.).
165
. ’88: warns us
to avoid
all meats which increase hunger,
that is, which make us desire to be hungry afresh
, just as…
Cf. Plutarch (tr. Amyot),
De la curiosité
, 67 p.
166
. Cf. the advice of the giant heroes in Rabelais,
Tiers Livre
, TLF, XXXV, 46 ff. and notes. Cf. Tiraquellus,
De legibus connubialibus
, XV, 56 ff, with references to Thomas Aquinas, etc.
167
. ’88: rigorous
and inhumane –
concern…
The ensuing notion that the soul is ‘imprisoned’ in the body is. Platonic commonplace. (The usual corollary was that the soul should strive, in ecstasy and rapture, to escape from the body. Montaigne does not accept it for most men.)
168
. The temptations of saints are not so much grossly corporeal as spiritual and mental.
169
. Horace,
Epodes
, XII, 19–20; then,
Odes
, IV, xiii, 26–8.
170
. Erasmus,
Apophthegmata
, VII,
Bion Borysthenites
, II. Cheese, curd,
Caseus
, was a Latin term of amorous endearment. (Erasmus chastely holds this expression to mean that Philosophy cannot ‘hook’ tender minds; Montaigne, more literally, that ageing philosophers cannot ‘hook’ tender lovers.)
171
. A famous saying, parodied by Rabelais (
Gargantua
, XXXI, end) to mock Picrochole, his foolish, choleric monarch.
172
. Martial,
Epigrams
, X, xc, 10–11.
173
. Xenophon,
Anabasis
, II, vi; then, Suetonius,
Life of Galba
, XXII.
174
. Ovid, wretched in unending exile on the orders of Augustus Caesar (
Ex Ponto
, I, iv, 49–51).
175
. Diogenes Laertius,
Life of Arcesilaus.
(Cf. Erasmus,
Apophthegmata
, VII,
Arcesilaus
,VI.)
176
. Horace,
Odes
, II, v, 21–4; then, Plato,
Protagoras
, 309 AB, alluding to Homer,
Iliad
, XXIV, 348.
177
. Conspirators who freed Athens from the tyranny of the Pisistratids. Similarly, a sprouting beard freed youths from the ‘tyranny’ of homosexual advances: Plutarch (tr. Amyot),
De l’amour
, 613 AB. Saying of Bion (not Dion).
178
. Horace,
Odes
, IV, xiii, 9–10.
179
. Margaret of Navarre,
Heptaméron
, Journée 4, nouvelle 35 (an unfair remark: Margaret does not ‘ordain’ it, but notes that it is usual).
180
. St Jerome,
Letters, Ad Chromatium
(identified by Marie de Gournay).
181
. This was the general drift of Renaissance ‘platonic’ love.
182
. Cf. I, 28, ‘On affectionate relationships’; Socratic philosophers paid with their teachings of virtue and wisdom for the homage of youthful disciples. Philosophers beget ideas (brain-children) rather than real children.
183
. In Plato’s
Republic
(not his
Laws
), V, 468.
184
. Virgil,
Georgics
, III, 98–100 (of an aged stallion).
185
. Catullus, LXV, 19–24.
186
. Plato,
Republic
, V, where no sex distinctions are allowed to affect eligibility for the offices of State.
187
. Erasmus,
Apophthegmata
, VII,
Antisthenes
, LVII. Erasmus comments: ‘So too did Socrates think women to be no less apt for instruction in all the duties of wisdom than men, provided they receive the same education. Yet the mob condemn women as though they cannot be taught virtue.’
3
. In the
Problemata
, XXXIII, 9, attributed to Aristotle.
4
. Plutarch (tr. Amyot),
Causes naturelles
, 536H–537A.
5
. Seneca,
Epist. moral.
, LIII, 3 (of his own experience).
6
. Plato,
Symposium
, 221A–B.
9
. Nicolas Chalcocondylas,
Décadence de l’empire grec
, VII, vii (tr. Biaise de Vigenère).
10
. Du Haillant,
Hist. des Roys de France
, II; then a series of examples from Pietro Crinito,
De honesta disciplina
, XVI, v.
11
. Isocrates,
Nicocles
, VI, xix.
12
. [C] all from Cicero,
De officiis
, II, xvi, 56–7. Aristotle’s judgement otherwise unknown.
13
. The Queen Mother, Catherine de’ Medici.
14
. Plutarch,
Life of Galba
.
15
. Cicero,
De finibus
, V, vi, 16.
16
. Plutarch (tr. Amyot),
Dicts notables des anciens Roys
, 190 D–E.
17
. In Amyot’s Plutarch (525 F) this verse of Corinna’s is cited in French, not Greek. The original appears in Justus Lipsius,
De amphitheatro
.
18
. Cicero,
De officiis
, II, xv, 52–3; 54.
19
. ’88: since
clowns, pimps, fiddlers and other such riff-raff
reckon that…
22
. Cicero,
De officiis
, I, xiv, 43 (on the liberality of Sylla and Gaius Caesar); then, II, xv, 53–4 (on Philip of Macedonia).
23
. Related after Pietro Crinito,
De honesta disciplina
, XII, vii, with interpolated verses from Calpurnius’
Bucolica
, VII, 47; Juvenal,
Satires
, III, 153–5 and Calpurnius,
Bucolica
, VII, 64–75, taken (with much else) from Justus Lipsius’
De amphitheatro
.
24
. Martial,
Epigrams
, XII, xxix, 15–16; then, Calpurnnius,
Bucolica
, VII, 53–4, with other matter from Justus Lipsius.
25
. ’88: forces.
There is verisimilitude in saying that we neither go forward nor backwards, rolling, rather, spinning and changing
. I am afraid… Then, Horace,
Odes
, IV, ix, 25–8.
26
. Lucretius, V, 327–8.
27
. Cicero,
De natura deorum
, I, xx, 54 (changing Cicero’s
atomorum
to
formarum
, thus linking the concept less to Lucretius than to Plato’s Great Chain of Being).
28
. Many, including Rabelais, believed that printing was invented under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, so as to counteract the Devil’s invention of gunpowder and artillery (cf.
Pantagruel
, TLF, VIII, 92–5). Knowledge of China was being spread especially by the Jesuits.
29
. Lucretius, II, 1136; then, V, 331–5.
30
. The Inca garden and museum described on hearsay by Lopez de Gomara (tr. Fumée),
Histoire générale des Indes
, V, xiii. Much of what follows is from that work.