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1. ’80: an honourable gentleman.

2. Reformers often considered the cross, when used as a symbol, to be idolatrous and blasphemous. Here it is used as a disguise.

3. Juvenal, Satires, XIII, 195 (adapted).

4. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Pourquoy la justice divine differe la punition des malefices, 261 E–G (a major borrowing).

5. Erasmus, Adages, I, II, XIV, Malum consilium.

6. Virgil, Georgics, IV, 238. Montaigne wrote Mousches guespes (wasps), but clearlymeans ‘bees’.

7. This Spanish fly was particularly poisonous. Cf. Cicero, Tusc. disput., V, xl, 117; Pliny, XXIX, iv, 30; XI, xxv, 41.

8. Lucretius, V, 1157–9.

9. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Pourquoi la justice divine differe, 262 D–E; Seneca, Epist. moral., XCVII, 13.

10. Juvenal, Satires, XIII, 2–3.

11. Ovid, Fasti, I, 485–6. Cf. also Cognatus, Adages, Conscientia crimen prodit.

12. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Comment on se peut louer soy-mesme, 139 F; Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights; IV, xviii; Livy, Annales, XXXVIII. Erasmus gives these anecdotes s.v. Scipio Africanus Major in his Apophthegmata.

13. St Augustine, City of God, XIX, vi (against torture) with Vives’ comments (in which Vives cites Etiam innocentes [from Publius Syrus] and apologizes for turning a commentary into a plea against torture). Montaigne is deeply indebted to him for what follows.

14. Quintus Curtius, VI ff.

15. ’80: it is the best method that…

16. Vives (cf. note 13 above).

17. Anecdote from Froissart in H. Estienne’s Apologie pour Hérodote.