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1. Propertius, II, i, 69. (For the theme, cf. Erasmus, Opera, 1703–6, V, 488F–461E. Montaigne’s theme of the perennial flux of all things is Heracleitan.)
2. Plutarch, Life of Demosthenes.
3. Aristotle’s opinion was normative: all human beings have the same form (soul), the form of Man. What distinguishes each individual person is the union of one particular example of that form with one particular body.
4. In the ‘chain of being’, Man comes between the beasts and the angels.
5. ‘Lawful’ by the law of the Church.
6. Socrates and his fellows. Cf. II, 12, ‘An apology for Raymond Sebond’ (beginning); then [C], from Seneca, Epist. moral., LXXXI, 22.
7. Image and development from Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De la tranquillité de l’ame, 75 G.
8. Seneca, Epist. moral., XXXIX, 6.
9. Cicero, Tusc. disput., II, lxiii; then, De nat. deorum, III, xxxv.
10. Horace, Odes, IV, x, 7–8.
11. Cf. the adage attributed variously to Socrates and to Diogenes: ‘Aedibus in nostris quae prava aut recta geruntur” (It is in our own home that good or evil are done): Erasmus, Adages, I, VI, LXXXV.
12. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Le banquet des sept sages, 155 E (Bias), and Instruction pour ceulx qui manient affaires d’Estat, 162 G (Julius Caesar); then, Life of Agesilas.
13. Matthew 13:57; Mark 6:4; Luke 4:24; John 4:44.
14. Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics, X, vii, 10 (1179 a).
15. Lucan, Pharsalia, 237–42.
16. Seneca, Epist. moral., XCIV, 42.
17. Angels have souls higher than men’s in the chain-of-being: Cato had a soul higher than Montaigne’s within the human scale.
18. That is, even ordinate actions and reactions are relative insofar as they must be judged ‘according to’ one’s capacities and judgements.
19. Each man is, in God’s sight, sinful (Romans 3:23; 5:12), and God is the scrutator cordium, ‘He who searches all hearts’ (I Chronicles 28:9); ‘He who searcheth the heart and knoweth the mind’ (Romans 8:27); ‘He that searcheth the reins and the heart’ (Revelations 2:23).
20. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Dicts notables des anciens Roys…, 197 E.
21. For the Stoics, causation was absolute: everything is fated and unalterable.
22. Sophocles, criticized by Epicurus: Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Que l’on ne sçauroit vivre heureusement selon la doctrine d’Epicurus, 283 DE; Quintilian, V, xii.
23. Plutarch, Life of Antisthenes; Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VII, Antisthenes, XIV.
24. I Samuel 10: 26, ‘whose hearts God hath touched’. Adapted for the motto of her emblematic picture FRUSTRA (‘in Vain’) by the Protestant author Georgette de Montenay in her Emblemes ou devises chrestiennes (Lyons, 1571).
25. Temperance is Aristotle’s sōphrosyne (the Mean between two vices, one of excess and one of defect) (Nicomachaean Ethics, II, vi, 3). This Classical virtue, as well as the four Cardinal virtues, were held to apply to Christians, though all needed completing by the three theological virtues (Faith, Hope and Charity). St Paul in Philippians 4:5 counselled, ‘Let your moderation be known to all men.’