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1. Several examples, all from Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Dicts notables des Lacedaemoniens.
2. Cicero, Tusc. disput., V, XIV, 42; then many borrowings from Seneca, Epist. moral., LXIX-LXXVIII, especially LXX.
3. Tacitus, Annales, XIII, lvi; Seneca, Phoenissae, 151–3.
4. Cicero, De finibus, III, xviii, 60.
5. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Aristippus and of Speucippus (up to this point, Montaigne’s position is that of Seneca).
6. [A] originally read: For, apart from that authority which, when forbidding murder, included self-murder in it, many philosophers hold…
7. The great commonplace from Plato’s Phaedo: see St Augustine, City of God, I, xxii; Erasmus, Adages, IV, VI, LXXXI, Nemo sibi nascitur, Tiraquellus’ discussion for and against suicide in De nobilitate, XXXI (where Plato is cited, §561).
8. Virgil, Aeneid, IV, 434–7:
9. St Augustine, City of God, I, xxii and xxiv.
10. Horace, Odes, IV, iv, 57–60.
11. Seneca (the dramatist), Phoenissae, 190–93.
12. Martial, XI, lvi, 15–16.
13. Horace, Odes, III, iii, 7–8.
14. Martial, II, lxxv, 2.
15. Lucan, Pharsalia, VII, 104–7.
16. Lucretius, III, 79–82.
17. Plato, Laws, 9. (See Tiraquellus, De nobilitate, XXXI, §561.)
18. Lucretius, III, 862–4.
19. A concept attributed to Zeno the philosopher.
20. Tiraquellus, De legibus connubialibus, IV, §32 (after Plutarch’s Famous Women).
21. Plutarch, Life of Cleomenes. (The man’s name was Therycion.)
22. In the Saturnalia of Justus Lipsius, attributed to Pentadius.
23. Seneca, Epist. moral., LXX, 7.
24. Flavius Josephus, De vita sua.
25. An addition by Montaigne has gone astray from the Bordeaux copy. In ’95 we read: protect. In the battle of Serisolles Monsieur d’Enghien made two assays at slashing his throat with his sword, despairing of the fortune of a battle, which, where he was, was going badly, and in his haste nearly deprived himself of the pleasure of so fair a victory. I have…
26. Seneca, Epist. moral., XIII, 11.
27. Virgil, Aeneid, I, 425–7.
28. Pliny, Hist., nat., XXV. The stone was Montaigne’s complaint.
29. Seneca, Epist. moral., LVIII, 36.
30. Livy, XXXVII, xlvi.
31. Ibid., XLV, xxvi.
32. Narrated by Guillaume Paradin, Histoire de son temps.
33. Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, XII, v.
34. Seneca, Epist. moral., LXX, 10.
35. II Maccabees 14:37–46 – virtually word for word from the Latin Vulgate. (The English Geneva Bible warns the reader that there are occasions when Biblical exempla are not to be followed: this suicide is one of them.)
36. Cf. St Augustine, City of God, I, xxv–xxvi; he feared that some virgins might, despite themselves, enjoy rape. Nevertheless, except when individually counselled to do so by God, desire to avoid such pleasure does not justify suicide. Vives in his notes cites Montaigne’s examples of Pelagia and Sophronia, after Eusebius’ Ecclesiasti cal History.
37. Allusion to some conteur, not a theologian.
38. Clément Marot, De nenny (ed. Guiffrey), IV, 241.
39. Tacitus, Annals, V.
40. Ibid., XV.
41. Herodotus, I, ccxiii.
42. Herodotus, VII, cvii.
43. Simon Goulart, Histoire du Portugal. Examples follow from Tacitus, Annals, Livy, Quintus Curtius and Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Du trop parler, 93D–E.
44. St Paul, Philippians 1:23; Romans 7:24; Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, xxxiv, 84. Contemporary theologians, philosophers and jurisconsults used these texts to show that suicide is often both reasonable and natural, but forbidden by God’s ordinance which supersedes both reason and nature. (Cf. Bartholomew of Medina, Expositio in Secundam Secundae (of Thomas Aquinas), Salamanca, 1588; Tiraquellus, De nobilitate, XXXI, §§ 512–13.
45. Jean de Joinville, Histoire et cronique de Saint Louis, LI. (Outremer: the Crusader Kingdoms, and the Near East generally.)
46. Orissa. This is an account of the Juggernaut (Krishna’s idol dragged in a huge carriage, beneath whose wheels pilgrims were said to immolate themselves).
47. This and the following episode from Valerius Maximus, Memorabilia, II, vi, 7 and 8. (Cea or Ceos is an island of the Cyclades.)
48. Pliny, Hist., nat., IV, xii.