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1. Plutarch, Life of Marius; Bouchet, Annales d’Acquitaine; Seneca, De Clementia.

2. Publius Syrus cited by Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, XVII, 14.

3. Seneca, Epistles, XX, 5.

4. Demosthenes (?), On the Fallen at Chaeronea; then, Horace, Epistles, I, i, 98–9.

5. Horace, Satires, II, vii, 82; Lucretius, III, 1070–3; Homer, cited in Latin by St Augustine, City of God, V, xxxviii.

6. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Empedocles. Also cited in Erasmus’ Apophthegmata.

7. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, IV, Antigonus Rex Macedonum, XXXIII.

8. Horace, Epistles, II, ii, 36; 26–40 (where the soldier’s tale is told).

9. That is, Mechmet II. Cf. Nicolas Chalcocondylas (tr. Blaise de Vigenère), De la décadence de l’empire grec, 1584.

10. That each individual is swayed by a good guardian angel and a bad angel derives from platonizing interpretations of Matthew 18:10; Rabelais accepts it (Tiers Livre, TLF, VII). (Cf. Erasmus, Adages, I, I, LXXII, Genius malus.)

11. ‘I make a distinction’, a term used in formal debates to reject or modify an opponent’s assertion.

12. Cicero, Tusc. disput., II, xxvii, 65.

13. Ibid., IV, xxxvii, 79. Alexander murdered Clitus when drunk.

14. Cicero, De officiis, I, xxi, 71.

15. Cicero, Paradoxa, V, i; Seneca, Epist. moral., XX, 2–3.

16. Several echoes of Seneca, Epist. moral., LXXI and XCII and of other Epistles throughout this chapter.

17. Cicero, De senectute, VII.

18. Herodotus, Historia, V, xxix.

19. Seneca, Epist. moral., CXX, 22. In the following sentence ‘ambition’, as often, means inordinate ambition; so too covetousness (‘avarice’ in the French original) means an inordinate desire to obtain, and retain, not only wealth but honour: its sense is close to that of inordinate ambition. Montaigne holds that bad motives can produce admirable qualities.

20. Tibullus, II, i, 75–6.