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1. A saying of Epictetus, collected by Stobaeus in his Apophthegms and inscribed by Montaigne in his library.

2. Aristotle considers death as something to be most dreaded: the Stoics believe that (since any man can take his own life) it is the ultimate means of escaping pain, disgrace, defeat or other evils. Montaigne’s ideas here are influenced by Seneca.

3. ’80: Others, do they not welcome it with quite different countenance? One…

4. [B] Until [C]: too cheap and available… The following verse: Lucan, Pharsalia, IV, 580.

5. Cicero, Tusc. disput., V, xl, 117.

6. [A] until [C]: common ordinary people…

7. Series of jests straight from Henri Estienne, Apologie pour Herodote, 1566, p. 175.

8. Jean Bouchet, Annales d’Acquitaine.

9. Simon Goulart, Hist. du Portugal, Paris, 1587, IV, ii.

10. Bonaventure Des Périers, Nouvelles récréations et joyeux devis; end of the first nouvelle.

11. Plutarch, Brutus.

12. Jeronimo Osorio (da Fonseca), Historia de rebus Emmanuelis Lusitanae regis virtute gestis, Cologne, 1574, pp.6r° and 13r°. (Montaigne was himself descended from Iberian Jews.) From 1595 onwards, this chapter became I, 40. [’95]; as any other. In the town of Castelnaudary fifty Albigensian heretics all suffered themselves to be burned together, with resolute hearts, in one fire, rather than to disown their opinions… Cicero says…

13. Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, xxxvii.

14. Perhaps Seneca, whose Epistle LXX is devoted to suicide and makes similar points.

15. A frequently cited example going back to Diogenes Laertius’ Life of Pyrrho.

16. Cicero, Tusc. disput., II, vi, 15.

17. ’80: sovereign evil…

18. Cicero, Tusc. disput., II, XXV, 61.

19. Lucretius, IV, 485.

20. Etienne de La Boëtie, Poèmes, ed. Montaigne, p. 233; addressed to Montaigne.

21. Ovid, Heroïdes; ‘Epistle of Ariana to Theseus’, 82; [A]: what the sages chiefly fear…

22. St Augustine, City of God, I, ii (adapted).

23. ’80: and fear it… [A] was written before the onset of Montaigne’s colic paroxysms.)

24. Seneca, De providentia, VI.

25. Cicero, De finibus, II, xx, 65–6.

26. Lucan, Pharsalia, IX, 404.

27. Cicero, De finibus, II, xxix, 95, translated in the text before quotation.

28. Seneca, Epist. moral., LXXVIII, 17.

29. Cicero, De finibus, I, xv, 49.

30. ’80: happiness in the soul and to have too much commerce with the body. Just as… (Cf. Seneca, Epist. moral., LXXVIII. In. [C], cf. Plato, Phaedo, 66B ff.

31. St Augustine, City of God, I, x (adapted).

32. Esdras 13:8; John 16:21.

33. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, De l’amour, XXXIV, p. 613C.

34. ’80: fox (for theft was a virtuous deed for them, but with the proviso that it was more disgraceful to be caught than it is with us): he stuffed…

35. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Life of Lycurgus, xiv; Cicero, Tusc. disput., V, xxvii, 77. (Theme taken up again in the Essays, I, 23.)

36. Cf. Seneca, Ep. moral., XXIV, 5.

37. Seneca, Ep. moral., LXXVIII, 18–19.

38. Aulus Gellius, XII, xvii, 41.

39. Cicero, Tusc. disput., II, xvii, 41.

40. Tibullus, I, viii, 45–6 (adapted).

41. Written before the death of Henry II of France in 1589; he was King of Poland in 1573 and 1574.

42. Guillaume Postel, Des Histoires Orientales, Paris, 1575, p. 228. The girl mentioned above is further situated in [’95] and could well be Mlle de Gournay. [’95]: apart from which, when I came to those famous Estates meeting at Blois, I had seen a girl beforehand in Picardy who, to prove…

43. This is confirmed by Joinville, Histoire et cronique du Roy S. Loys, XCIV.

44. Jean Bouchet, Annales d’Acquitaine, Poitiers, 1557, p. 75r°

45. Foulke III, who died in 1040.

46. Montaigne’s diary suggests this was his friend the Comte de Foix, whose three sons were killed near Agen, 29 July 1587. [’95]: as a special blessing from heaven. I do not follow such monstrous humours but I myself…

47. Cicero, Tusc. disput., III, xxviii, 71.

48. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Dicts notables des anciens Roys, princes et capitaines, p. 189D.

49. Livy, XXXIV, xvii.

50. Montaigne is alluding to ascetic anchorites.

51. Among those who had gelded themselves was Origen. Montaigne believed that Democritus had blinded himself (cf. I, 29; II, 12). Textor cites this after Lucretius in his Officina (s.v. Caeci et Excaecati).

52. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Thales, I, xxvi, 28.

53. Aristippus. Cf. Horace, Satires, II, iii, 99–110.

54. Seneca, Ep. moral., XVII, 11.

55. Plutarch, Life of Julius Caesar.

56. Catullus, IV, 18.

57. ’88: right beside me. Fortune can make… (Sors replacing Fortune)

58. Publius Syrus, cited by Justus Lipsius, Politici, V, xviii.

59. Sallust, De republica, I, 1; cited there as from Appuleius.

60. Seneca, Epist. moral., LXXIV, 4 (adapted).

61. ’88: stage, I did have goods. Becoming so hotly attached to them, I…

62. Seneca, De Tranquillitate animi, VIII.

63. Plato, Laws, I, 1, 631B–D.

64. Or rather, the Elder Dionysius: Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Les dictz notables des anciens Roys, Princes, et grands capitaines, p. 190E–F.

65. ’80: for four or five years: some good Fortune or other cast me out…

66. Cicero, Paradoxa, VI, iii, 49.

67. Until [C]: a vice, which I have always held to be the least excusable and the most ridiculous…

68. Cf. Xenophon, Cyropaedia, VIII, iii, 40.

69. Perhaps Prevost de Sansac, Archbishop of Bordeaux, a contemporary of Montaigne’s.

70. Cf. Plutarch, tr. Amyot, Du vice et de la vertu, I, 38B.

71. Themes developed in ‘An apology for Raymond Sebond’ (II, 12): cf. the bent oar. Here Montaigne is translating from Seneca, Epist. moral., LXXI, 23–6.

72. Cicero, Tusc. disput., II, xxii, 52.

73. Seneca, Epist. moral., XII, 10: the great Stoic commonplace making suicide the ultimate recourse of the wise man. Until [C]: constrained to pay us with the following: ‘Living…