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1. Erasmus, Adages, I, II, LI, Taurum tollet, qui vitulum sustulerit (stressing importance of childhood habits). Cf. also IV, IX, XXV, Usus est altera natura.

2. Pliny, XXVI, ii.

3. For Plato (Republic, VII) all mankind are like men born and bred in a cave, who are convinced that shadows on the wall projected by spiritual realities outside theircave are those realities themselves. Only the inspired philosopher can hope to enlighten them.

4. Mithridates. This, and the reference to Albertus Magnus, from Pedro Mexia, Varia lecion, I, xxvi.

5. From Francisco Lopez de Gomara (tr. Fumée), Hist, générale des Indes (Paris, 1578).

6. Cicero, Tusc. disput., II, xvii, 40.

7. Those dwelling near the cataracts grow used to the noise and therefore cannot hear it: so too mankind cannot hear the music of the spheres. (Cicero, Dream of Scipio, XI, xix.)

8. Recorded by Diogenes Laertius, Life of Plato, III, xxxviii.

9. ’80: so fantastical – and…

10. Standard Christian doctrine: true belief requires prevenient grace, which cannot be merited.

11. Cicero, De natura deorum, I, xxx, 83.

12. All from Francisco Lopez de Gomara (tr. Fumée), Hist, générale des Indes, as is all of [B] after the following [C]

13. The borrowings from Gomara end here: there follows a borrowing from Herodotus and a series of borrowings from Simon Goulart’s Histoire du Portugal.

14. ’88: that opinion, so unnatural, that souls…(Belief in the immortality of the soul was thought to be virtually universal.)

15. Details follow, from Herodotus, Xenophon, Plutarch, etc.

16. The Amazons, described, for example, by the historian Justinus, II, iv.

17. ’80: Where not only the horror of death is despised but the hour of its coming even to the dearest persons one has is rejoiced in with great merriment; and as for pain, we know others where seven-year-old boys…

18. In Sparta. A much cited and admired example of self-sacrifice.

19. In Persia (Xenophon, Cyropaedia, I, ii, 11).

20. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Des Vertueux faits des femmes, and Herodotus, II, xii.

21. Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics, VII, vi, 1149 b; then follows a direct allusion to VII, v, 1148 b, on morbid desires arising from ethos.

22. [’95] over-mastery as such. It is by means of custom that each is pleased with the place in which Nature has planted him: the savages of Scotland have no time for Touraine, nor the Scythians for Thessalia. Darius…

23. After Herodotus, III, xii.

24. Lucretius, II, 1023–5 (Lambin).

25. [A], until [C]: so wretched and weak…

26. Plato, Laws, VIII, vi.

27. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Chrysippus.

28. [A] until [C]: wished similarly to assay himself and to loose…

29. The French, many of whose laws were in Latin or medieval French.

30. Isocrates, Ad Nicoclem, VI, xviii (a treatise on government).

31. According to Paulus Aemilius this Gascony gentleman’s name was, simply, ‘Gascon’.

32. France. (Such criticisms were long current. In Molière’s Le Misanthrope Alceste will appear laughable for objecting to such practices.)

33. The Stoic attitude: cf. Rabelais, Tiers Livre, TLF, VII and, in the following century, Molière in Le Misanthrope.

34. This was the golden political rule of Etienne de la Boëtie (cf. the end of I, 28, ‘On affectionate relationships’). The following verse is from a fragment of Greek tragedy.

35. Zaleucus; known from Diodorus Siculus, XII, iv.

36. Lycurgus the lawgiver of Sparta. Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus.

37. [A] until [C]: that old rusty sword…Cf. Valerius Maximus, II, vi-7. Massilia (now Marseilles) was a Greek colony.

38. ’88: which has beset us, for the last twenty-five or thirty years is not solely responsible… (The ‘novelty’ was the Reformation and the Wars of Religion.)

39. Ovid, Heroïdes (Epistle of Phyllis to Demophon, 48).

40. ’88: The first who shake…

41. Source not identified.

42. In Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Comment on peut discerner le flatteur d’avec l’amy, 44 E.

43. Terence, Andria, I, i, 114.

44. Livy, XXXIV, Iiv. ’88: the best of alleged reasons for novelty… (titre replaced by praetexte)

45. Livy, X, vi.

46. Herodotus, VIII, xxxvi.

47. Cf. Titus 3:1; Romans 13:1–7.

48. Christ in his apparent ‘foolishness’ is the ‘Wisdom of the Father’ (I Corinthians 1:30); his trial and crucifixion took place according to State law. Christians are the ‘elect’ (those chosen by God for salvation) and often find salvation through martyrdom. Christianity is spread by accepting injustice not by rebellion against the State. These are standard Catholic arguments, accepted by many from their reading of Erasmus.

49. Cicero, De divinatione, I, xl, 87; Isocrates, Ad Nicoclem, IX, xxxiii.

50. ’88: position: one cannot change anything without judging whatever one abandons to be bad, and whatever one adopts to be good. God does know…

51. Theology.

52. Miracles are exceptions and make bad law. (For the consequence of such a conviction, cf. Montaigne on witchcraft, I, 21, ‘On the power of the imagination’.)

53. Cicero, De natura deorum, III, ii, 5.

54. Seneca (the tragedian), Oedipus, III, 686.

55. An echo of Terence applied politically. Cf. II, 19, ‘On freedom of conscience’, end.

56. Agesilaus: the first of a series of borrowings from the relevant Lives of Plutarch.

57. Alexander the Great, in Plutarch’s Life. When he was told that Macedonian custom forbade their armies to take to the field during June, he commanded June to be renamed The Second May.

58. Plutarch’s Lysander.

59. Plutarch’s Parallel Lives of Flaminius and Philopoemen.