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1. Livy, XXXIX, xl.
2. Seneca, Epist. moral., LVI, 9 (adapted).
3. Cicero, Tusc. disput., V, XXXVIII, 113 (of the learned and erudite).
4. Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics, X, viii, 1178 b (referring to theōrētikē, contemplation, intellectual activity).
5. Cited by Xenophon (Memorabilia, I, iii, 3). In the Latin form ‘secundum quod potes’ it lends force to Montaigne’s conviction that all is not simple but secundum quid.
6. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De la pluralité des amis, 103 B–C, stressing that great friendships come in pairs, not in groups.
7. The most famous prudential maxim was, ‘So have a friend that he may be your enemy.’ Aristotle attributes it to Bias, one of the Seven Sages of Greece. In I, 28, Montaigne attributes it to Chilon.
8. Plato, Laws, VI, 778 A (of slaves, not servants).
9. Horace, Odes, III, xix, 3–8.
10. Cf. III, 1, ‘On the useful and the honourable’, note 28.
11. Juvenal, Satires, VI, 189–91 (adapted).
12. Seneca, Epist. moral., CXV, 2, condemning the affected style of clothes and speech of dandies.
13. Much the same reading as Montaigne likes himself (II, 10, ‘On books’), though doubtless presupposing that the books are in French not Latin.
14. Plutarch, Life of Dion; Hippomachas was a teacher of athletics.
15. Cicero, Paradoxa Stoicorum, V, 38 (the wise can appreciate objects of artistic beauty but should not be enslaved by them).
16. Ovid, Tristia, I, i, 83–4.
17. Tacitus, Annals, XIII, xlv; then, Plato, Phaedrus, 227 B–228 C.
18. Philosophy classified sexual intercourse among the physical necessities. Montaigne does not deny that it is so, but insists that sexual fulfilment is more than the physical slaking of an appetite.
19. Tacitus, Annals, VI, i; then a tale of Flora recounted among others by Brantôme in Les Dames Calantes (Deuxième Discours).
20. Guillaume Postel, Histoire des Turcs.
21. Intercourse with friends and with ladies.
22. Olivier de La March, Mémoires, 1561.
23. Seneca, Consolatio ad Polybium, XXVI.