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1. Horace, Ars poetica, 4. (Poets can create monsters at will; say a fair maid with the tail of a fish, that is, a mermaid.)
2. Edited and translated by Malcolm Smith as Slaves by Choice, Runnymede Books, RHBNC, Egham, 1988.
3. ’80: young, not having reached the age of eighteen years, as…
4. Cf. E. de La Boëtie: Mémoire sur la pacification des troubles, ed. Malcolm Smith, TLF, Droz, Geneva, 1983. This work antedates the Royal Edict of 17 January 1562 (which afforded limited toleration to Protestants and recognized the ‘Allegedly Reformed Church’. Montaigne published neither of these in his collection of the works of La Boëtie, F. Morel, Paris, 1571, since (as the Preface says) the time was ‘too unpleasant’. This chapter is an apology for La Boëtie, a defence of his ideas and a rejection of the smear that such loyal friendships can entail disloyalty to the State (a question already raised in antiquity).
5. For Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics, VIII, 1, a good fellowship (or society) is one which fosters ‘friendship’ in all of its senses.
6. Cf. C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves, Collins, Fount Paperbacks, 1960.
7. Montaigne mentions this in I, 23: ‘On habit: and on never easily changing a traditional law’. [A]: the other. Friendship never gets to such a point. There…
8. [A]: much the same as [C], but Aristippus not named. (Cf. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, III, Aristippus, LV, the probable source of [C]).
9. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De l’amitié fraternelle, 82E. Montaigne coarsens the terms of the bad brother (a philosopher) who in Plutarch simply refers to ‘the same natural organ’.
10. The antithesis of ‘willing slavery’, the subject of La Boëtie’s book.
11. Horace, Odes, II, ii, 6–7 (adapted to apply to Montaigne).
12. Catullus, Epigrams, LXVI, 17–18.
13. Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, X, vii.
14. ’80: union, it is likely that…
15. Cicero, Tusc. disput., IV, xxxiii, 70. (In Greek philosophical homosexuality the older man was the Lover; the younger, the Beloved, showed admiration, or gratitude for instruction.)
16. Cupid. (The ‘Academy’ was the School of Plato.)
17. In Plato’s Symposium (or Banquet), the main general source of all of [C] here.
18. Ibid.: tyrannies do not favour (homosexual) friendship-love; Hipparchus, tyrant of Athens, was therefore assassinated by the friends Harmodius and Aristogiton. (Cf. Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, XVII, 21: 7; Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, xlix, 116.)
19. Cicero, Tusc. disput., IV, xxiv, 71.
20. Cicero, De amicitia, XX, 74.
21. ’80: some divine force of destiny…
22. Published in the 1571 edition of La Boëtie’s works by Montaigne.
23. Cicero, De amicitia, XI, 33–9.
24. ’80: the wishes of Gracchus, for which he could answer as for his own. But…
25. Chilo’s chilling judgement was well known (cf. Du Bellay, Regrets, 140). It was normally attributed to Bias, one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Cf. Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, 1.3.30; Cicero, De amicitia, XVI, 49; Aristotle, Rhetoric, II, 14.
26. ’88: in common practice, in relation…
27. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VII, Aristoteles Stagirites, XXVIII.
28. Erasmus, ibid., VII, Aristoteles Stagirites, XIX.
29. Erasmus, ibid., III, Diogenes Cynicus, LXXXII.
30. From Lucian of Samosata, Toxaris, or, On friendship, XXII.
31. Xenophon, Cyropaedia, VIII, iii, 270.
32. Terence, Heautontimorumenos, I, i, 28.
33. Agesilaus (Cf. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, I, Agesilaus, LXVIII).
34. Horace, Satires, I, v, 44.
35. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De l’amitié fraternelle, 82C–D.
36. ’80: full happiness and tranquillity.
37. Virgil, Aeneid, V, 49–50.
38. Terence, Heautontimorumenos, I, 1, 97–8.
39. Horace, Odes, II, xvii, 5–9.
40. Catullus, LXVIII, 20 f.; LXV, 9 f. (adapted).
41. ’80: this eighteen-year-old boy. (Montaigne was planning to publish here, as the central ‘painting’ enhanced by his fringe of ‘grotesques’, La Boëtie’s essay ‘On Willing Slavery’. It had been exploited by Protestants as an anti-monarchist pamphlet, so he reluctantly omits it.)
42. ’80: life. It consists of twenty-nine sonnets which the Sieur de Poiferré, a man both practical and understanding who knew him long before me, has found by chance at home among his other papers and has just sent to me: for which I am much beholden to him; and I would wish that others who possess other fragments of his writings scattered here and there would do the same.