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1. Plato, Laws, XI, 934 A–B.
2. Horace, Satires, I, iv, 109–11.
3. ’88: more advantage from…
4. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, V, Cato Senior, XXXIX.
5. Anecdote not traced. Perhaps a confusion with the practice of the ancient musician Timotheus of Miletus. Cf. Quintilian, II, iii, 3.
6. ’88: routine: the routine sight of thieving and perfidiousness has guided and restrained my morals. To my taste…
7. Cicero, De finibus, I, viii, 28 (Torquatus defending Epicurus’ style of conversation).
8. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De la mauvaise honte, 81 B.
9. Renaissance rhetoric and dialectic in school and university did indeed often encourage pro et contra debates rather than a search for truth.
10. Plato, Republic, 539 A–C.
11. ’88: of the truth: why…
12. ’88: muddles and ruffles the debate. Yet another…
13. Seneca, Epist. moral., LIX, 15; then, Cicero, De finibus, I, xix, 63, criticizing Epicurean logic.
14. Seneca, Epist. moral., XXXIII, 7.
15. ’88: great nobility and value…
16. The theme of III, 13, ‘On experience’.
17. For Democritus, cf. Cicero, Academica, I, xii, 44: a celebrated saying of Democritus, cited similarly to Montaigne by the Christian theologian Lactantius, Institutiones divinarum III, 28, a reference given in the adage Veritas in profundo (Appendix Erasmi, in Adagia id est Proverbiorum collectio absolutissima, Frankfurt, 1656, p. 453).
18. Perhaps an echo of the similar remark attributed to him in Henry Estienne’s Apophthegmata, 1588, pp. 110–11.
19. Heraclitus, the Sage who wept at the folly of the world; normally coupled with Democritus, who laughed at it. Followed by the most famous saying of Myson (Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VII, Myson, I).
20. Literally silly ‘selon moy’ (that is, by my own terms of reference), even sillier ‘according to others’ (by their terms of reference).
21. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Comment on pourra recevoir utilité de ses ennemis, 110 E–F (and for Plato’s saying about to be quoted).
22. Erasmus, Adages, III, IV, II. Erasmus links the saying to Aristotle’s Nicomachaean Ethics, and to the complementary adage, Suum cuique pulchrum (one’s own is beautiful to oneself) (I, II, XV), further linked with Plato, Aristotle and Horace as a condemnation of philautia (self-love).
23. Another authoritative condemnation of self-love, in Aesop’s Beggar’s Wallet: we put our neighbours’ faults in the front pocket where we can see them, our own in the back one where we cannot. (Cf. Rabelais, TLF, Tiers Livre, TLF, XV, note 108, citing Erasmus’ Adages and Raymond Sebond.) ’88: olet. To sum up, we must live among the living and let each man follow his fashion without our worrying or without making ourselves ill about it. (In [C] changed and placed earlier.) 24. Terence, Andria, IV, ii, 9.
25. Plato, Gorgias, 480 B–C.
26. Perhaps a reference to the members of the Reformed Church; it is often taken to be so. But is it not rather an allusion to ascetic movements within the Roman Catholic Church tending to devalue the body and elevate asceticism?
27. Aristotle’s contention in Metaphysics, I, 1, 980b–981a. Experience and experiments as such do not constitute the art of medicine: the art consists in a general inference drawn from it by a man’s judgement.
28. Juvenal, Satires, VIII, 73–4.
29. Perhaps a reference to Plato, Republic, VI, 495 C–D.
30. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VI, Diversorum Graecorum, XXXII.
31. Martial, Epigrams, VIII, 15.
32. Cited by Amyot in his Prologue to Les Vies de Plutarque.
33. Virgil, Aeneid, III, 395; then, Horace, Odes, I, ix, 9.
34. ’88: never were there such military circumspection and prudence, especially in our nation as I see practised: perhaps…
35. Virgil, Georgia, I, 420–2.
36. Thucydides, cited (with others of the above) from Justus Lipsius’ Politici, as is the following, from Plautus’ Pseudolus.
37. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Comment il faut ouïr, 64 H.
38. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VII, Antisthenes, XXX.
39. Lopez de Gomara (tr. Fumée), Histoire générale des Indes, II, lxxvii.
40. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De l’esprit familier de Socrates, 636 BC.
41. Cicero, De officiis, I, xli, 147.
42. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Aristippus.
43. Xenophon, Cyropaedia, III, iii, 49–50.
44. Perhaps a vague recollection of Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Du trop parler, 95 BC, or of Lycurgus’ forbidding of hand-to-hand sports among citizens (Henry Estienne, Apophthegmata, 1568, pp. 416–17).
45. Henry II was killed while jousting; Henry, Marquess of Beaupréau died of wounds received in a tournament. There were other cases as well.
46. Ovid, Tristia, I, vii, 9.
47. Montaigne is contrasting inventio (the discovery of arguments or topics) with original powers of judgement. Philippe de Commines, III, xii; Tacitus, Annals, IV, xviii; Seneca, Epist. moral., LXXXVI, 32; Cicero, De petitione consultatus, ix.
48. ’88: biases. In that he is no less careful and diligent than Plutarch, who made an express claim to do so. This manner….
49. ’88: our own. Yet he did not overlook what he owed to the other aspect. Tacitus’ work…
50. Tacitus, Histories, II, xxxviii.
51. Once more a judgement secundum quid (in this case according to the standard of the laws of Tacitus’ day). It was not Tacitus’ fault, since a knowledge of Christian truth requires prevenient grace, which by definition cannot be in any way earned or deserved.
52. Tacitus, Annals, VI, vi.
53. Montaigne apparently accepts the contention of Duns Scotus (and others) that when a man loves himself or any other creature properly he loves God even more. Luther and many others denied this (Weimarer Ausgabe, XL, p. 461). Montaigne’s contention is more traditionally Catholic than Humanist.
54. Tacitus, Annals, XIII, xxxv; then, IV, lxxi (seen by some as a parody of Christ’s curing the blind man in Mark 8:23).
55. Quintus Curtius, IX, i; Livy, VIII, vi.
56. ’88: even judgements which are…
57. 88: All universal judgements are lax and dangerous…