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1. The sceptics. Cf. Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, I, vi, 12.

2. ’80: most beautiful and very fine saying…Seneca, Epist. moral., IV, 6.

3. Ibid., XCVIII, 6.

4. Ibid., IV, 5–6.

5. Ovid, Amores, II, xix, 27–8.

6. Seneca, De beneficiis, VII, ix.

7. Martial, Epigrams, IV, xxxvii.

8. Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus.

9. Horace, Epodes, XI, 9–10 (adapted).

10. Plutarch, Life of Pompey the Great.

11. Lucretius, De nat. rerum, IV, 1076–9.

12. Cato of Utica lent his second wife, Marcia, to Hortensius. This was much commented on by Christian writers. Cf. Tiraquellus, De legibus connubialibus, VII, 28.

13. Horace, Satires, I, ii, 108 (a huntsman comparing his course of love to his pursuit of a hare).

14. Ovid, Amores, II, xix, 47–8.

15. For Plato it is Want (Poros) and Plenty who together give birth to love: neither does by itself. Cf. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De Isis et Osiris, 33OH–331B.

16. Terence, Phormio, I, iii, 10.

17. Ovid, Amores, II, xix, 33.

18. Propertius, II, xiv, 19–20.

19. The mistress, then wife, of Nero. Tacitus, Annals, XIII, xlv.

20. Virgil, Eclogues, III, 65, then, Propertius, II, xv, 6.

21. [A1] until [C]: and more perfect than in any other nation. Beauty…

22. Throughout the Roman Empire divorce was permitted by law. The Roman Catholic Church forbade it utterly, though it did allow divortium (legal separation) and annulment.

23. Ovid, Amores, II, xix, 3.

24. Seneca, De clementia, I, xxiii.

25. Claudius Rutilius (of Numantia; fl. AD 410), De reditu suo, 397.

26. See Charles Estienne, Dictionarium historicum, s.v. ‘Argippei’, when the same details are given. (The eventual source is Herodotus.)

27. Lopez de Gomara, Histoire des Indes, III, xxx.

28. Seneca, Epist. moral., LXVIII, 4.

29. The first form of this chapter dates from about 1576. But Montaigne’s long reflection here was written on the Bordeaux copy just before he died in 1592.