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1. Only two manuscripts of part of Tacitus’ Annals survived. Montaigne read Tacitus through at one go (III, 8, ‘On the art of conversation’) and had studied the Commentaria on Tacitus of Justus Lipsius. For some, Tacitus was very much to be condemned since in his account of Nero’s persecution (Annals, XV, 44) he refers to Christianity as ‘a pernicious superstition’.

2. Ammianus Marcellinus, XXXV, iv.

3. Ibid., XVI, v.

4. Ibid., XXV, iii. (Epaminondas was a model hero for Montaigne.)

5. Cf. Prudentius, Apotheosis, 448–53.

6. Theodoret, Bishop of Cyprus, for the first version, Zonaras for the second. Montaigne’s authorities who witnessed Julian’s death are Ammianus Marcellinus and Eutropius.

7. Ammianus Marcellinus, XXI, v.

8. Cf. Erasmus, Adages, I, I, LXX, Homo homini lupus.

9. A line from Terence (Andria, II.i.6–7), satirically applied long before Montaigne to the King of France acting under compulsion, e.g. ‘Pasquillus on the King of France compelled to make peace: Quoniam id fieri quod vis non potest, velis id quod possis’ [‘Since you cannot do what you wish, Wish what you can’], in Pasquillus novus Terentianus, 1546 (no place of printing).