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1. Terence, Heautontimorumenos, III, v, 8 (adapted).

2. Tacitus, Annals, II, lxxxiii.

3. Lucretius, II, 1–2.

4. Perhaps an allusion to the Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day.

5. Plato permitted the magistrates or governor to lie ‘as a medicine’ in the interests of the State and morality. Cf. Republic, 389 b; 459c.

6. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Comment on pourra discerner le flatteur d’avec l’amy, 51 A.

7. A tale told by John Calvin in his Traité des Reliques; then, Cornelius Nepos, Life of Atticus.

8. Livy, XXXI, xxi; then, Herodotus, VII, clxiii (for Gelon).

9. As Chancellor of France he showed, despite his bishopric, an understanding for the Protestants.

10. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De la curiosité, 64 F.

11. Aesop, Fables, 293; then Cicero, De officiis, I, xxi, 113.

12. Cicero, De officiis, III, xvii, 769.

13. Plutarch, Life of Alexander, then Seneca, Epist moral., XCV, 30.

14. Tacitus, Annals, II, lxv-Ixvii.

15. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Comment on pourra discerner le flatteur d’avec l’amy, 49 D–E; then, Les dicts notables des anciens Roys, 189 C and Erasmus, Apophthegmata, V, Aegyptii, XXXIII.

16. The doctor wrote to Fabricius offering to poison Pyrrhus, to whom Fabricius forwarded the letter, telling him to choose his friends better.

17. Jean Hubert-Fulstin, Hist. des Roys, et Princes de Pologne, 1573. Then, Plutarch, Life of Eumenes.

18. From the Epitome of Florus, often printed before Livy, XXVII.

19. Jacques Laverdin, Scanderbeg. Then, for Clovis, Du Haillant, Histoire des Roys de France.

20. Tacitus, Annals, V, ix; then, Nicolas Chalcocondylas, De la decadence de l’Empire Grec.

21. Cicero, De officiis, III, xxix, 106.

22. Cf. I, 38, ‘How we weep and laugh at the same thing’.

23. Cicero, De officiis, III, xxii, 87. (In the next sentence I follow the reading of ’95, etc.: changement (change of mind), not jugement.)

24. Cicero, De officiis. III, xxx, 110.

25. Cf. II, 36, ‘On the most excellent of men’.

26. Montaigne’s veneration of Epaminondas is shared by Plutarch (his principal source of the details given) throughout his Oeuvres Morales: cf. Amyot’s index s.v. Epaminondas.

27. Plutarch, lives of Caesar and of Marius.

28. Before battle the Spartans (the enemy of Epaminondas) tamed their wrath by listening to flute music: Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Comment il faut refrener la colere, 59F; cf. 51 G-H.

29. Livy, XXV, xviii; then Ovid, Ex ponto, I, vii, 37–8, and Cicero, De officiis, III, xxiii, 90.

30. Lucan, Pharsalia, VII, 321–3 (a poet much read because of his subject during the French Civil Wars of Religion).

31. Tacitus, Hist., III, 1; and III, li; then, Propertius, III, ix, 7.

32. That is, individual priests and monks are required to be celibate, despite the acknowledged prime usefulness of marriage. Both Plato and Aristotle ranked marriage among the most useful institutions; Stobaeus (Sermo LXV) has a long eulogy on the subject from Hierocles’ book On Marriage.