The Complete Essays (191 page)
Read The Complete Essays Online
Authors: Michel de Montaigne
Tags: #Essays, #Philosophy, #Literary Collections, #History & Surveys, #General
That great man [B] Aesop saw his master pissing as he walked along. ‘How now,’ he said. ‘When we run shall we have to shit?’
187
Let us husband our time; but there still remains a great deal fallow and underused. Our mind does not willingly concede that it has plenty of other hours to
perform its functions without breaking fellowship during the short time the body needs for its necessities. They want to be beside themselves, want to escape from their humanity. That
is
madness: instead of changing their Form into an angel’s they change it into a beast’s; they crash down instead of winding high. [C] Those humours soaring to transcendency terrify me as do great unapproachable heights; and for me nothing in the life of Socrates is so awkward to digest as his ecstasies and his daemonizings, and nothing about Plato so human as what is alleged for calling him divine. [B] And of [C] our [B] disciplines it is those which ascend the highest which, it seems to me, are the most [C] base and [B] earth-bound. I I can find nothing so [C] abject [B] and so mortal in the life of Alexander as his fantasies about [C] his immortalization. [B] Philotas, in a retort he made in a letter, showed his mordant wit when congratulating Alexander on his being placed among the gods by the oracle of Jupiter Ammon: ‘As far as you are concerned I’m delighted,’ he said, ‘but there is reason to pity those men who will have to live with a man, and obey a man, who [C] trespasses beyond, and cannot be content with, [B] the measure of a man’:
188
[C]
Diis te minorem quod geris, imperas
.
[Because you hold yourself lower than the gods, you hold imperial sway.]
189
[B] The noble inscription by which the Athenians honoured Pompey’s visit to their city corresponds to what I think:
D’autant es tu Dieu comme
Tu te recognois homme
.
[Thou art a god in so far as thou recognizest that thou art a man.]
It is an accomplishment, absolute and as it were God-like, to know how to enjoy our being as we ought. We seek other attributes because we do not understand the use of our own; and, having no knowledge of what is
within, we sally forth outside ourselves. [C] A fine thing to get up on stilts: for even on stilts we must ever walk with our legs! And upon the highest throne in the world, we are seated, still, upon our arses.
[B] The most beautiful of lives to my liking are those which conform to the common measure, [C] human and ordinate, without miracles though and [B] without rapture.
Old age, however, has some slight need of being treated more tenderly. Let us commend it to that tutelary god of health – and, yes, of wisdom merry and companionable:
Frui paratis et valido mihi,
Latoe, dones, et, precor, integra
Cum mente, nec turpem senectam
Degere, nee cythara carentem
.
[Vouchsafe, O Son of Latona, that I may enjoy those things I have prepared; and, with my mind intact I pray, may I not degenerate into a squalid senility, in which the lyre is wanting.]
190
Where there are numerous entries under a heading
,
bold type
indicates more than a passing reference. Footnotes are not indexed
.
Abra,
246
Adrian (cardinal of Cometo),
247
Aegisthus (myth, son of Thyestes),
826
Aelius Verus (Roman emperor),
225
Aeneas,
47
Aerschot, Phillippe de Croi, Duke of,
247
Aesop,
460
,
869
,
873
,
1172
,
1211
,
1241
,
1267
Aethalides,
624
Afranius (Roman governor of Spain),
836
Agamedes (myth. architect),
650
Agamemnon,
1027
Agarista (daughter of Clisthenes),
658
Agathocles (King of Syracuse),
319
Agenois, Lord Seneschal d’,
48
Agesilaus (King of Sparta),
14
,
85
,
138
,
161
,
255
,
306–7
,
317
,
496
,
594
,
822–3
,
1123
Agesilaus (philosopher),
216
,
1008
Agis (King of Sparta),
317
,
392
,
508
,
823
Agricola,
1175
Agrippa, Marcus Vipsanius (Roman commander),
304
,
689
Agrippa von Nettesheim, Henry Cornelius,
xxxiii
,
xxxvi
Agrippina,
264
Aignan, St,
248
Ajax (King of Salamis),
639
Alba (Alva) Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of,
28
,
751
Albertus Magnus (Albert of Cologne),
123
Albucilla,
688
Albuquerque, Alphonso d’ (Portuguese viceroy),
266
Alcibiades (Athenian general and politician),
187
,
719
,
852
,
942
,
1018
,
1051
,
1156
,
1215
,
1255
,
1260
Alcinus,
456
Alcmaeon of Crotona (Greek philosopher),
575
,
627
,
871
Alexander III (the Great),
5–6
,
27
,
65
,
85
,
94
,
138
,
145
,
183
,
187
,
256
,
281
,
292
,
303–4
,
317
,
322
,
329
,
338–9
,
378
,
404
,
453
,
582
,
645
,
719
,
753
,
761
,
803
,
833
,
837
,
840
,
852
,
853–5
,
913
,
990
,
1000
,
1031
,
1041
,
1042
,
1137
,
1169
,
1189
,
1199
,
1223
,
1258
,
1264
,
1268
Alexander VI (Pope),
247
Alexander (Tyrant of Pheres),
786
Alexandridas,
176
Alfonso (king of Aragon),
296
,
327
Aliénor (Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of Henry II of England),
64
Alviano, Bartolomeo d’ (Venetian general),
13
Amafinius (Epicurean writer),
755
Amasis (Egyptian king),
114
Amestris (mother of Xerxes),
583
Aminomachus (heir to Epicurus),
704
Ammianus Marcellinus (Roman historian),
75
,
455
,
760
,
820
Amurath (Murad) I (Sultan of Turkey),
901
Amurath (Murad) II (Sultan of Turkey),
226
,
804
Amurath (Murad) III (Sultan of Turkey),
769
Amycus (myth. boxer),
792
Amyot, Jacques (Bishop of Auxerre, translator of Plutarch),
xviii
,
li
,
140
,
309
.
408
Anacharsis (Scythian philosopher),
298
,
387
Anacreon,
1009
Anaxagoras,
153
,
505
,
568
,
578
,
589
,
600–601
,
606
Anaxarchus (Greek philosopher),
389
Anaximenes of Miletus (Ionian philosopher),
179
,
575
Andreosso (husband of Joanna of Naples),
1002
Androdus (Androcles)
xxxii
,
532–3
Andronicus (Emperor of the East),
360
Andros the Argive,
1228
Angelica,
181
Antaeus,
792
Antigonus Dosun (King of Macedon),
392
Antigonus Gonatus (King of Macedon),
262
,
960
,
1109
Antigonus the one-eyed (Alexander’s general),
24
,
292
,
376
,
530
,
900
,
1171
Antinonides (Greek musician),
989
Antinous (defender of Epirus),
399
Antiochus (Soter) I, (King of Syria),
110
Antiochus III, the Great (King of Sparta),
780
Antiochus IV (Epiphanes) (King of Sparta),
316
,
400
,
389
Antiochus of Ascalon,
1091
Antipater (Alexander’s general),
161
,
392
Antipater (Stoic philosopher),
1106
Antisthenes (Cynic philosopher),
267
,
270
,
281
,
390
,
478
,
496
,
553
,
859
,
920
,
968
,
1016
,
1048
,
1059–60
,
1119
,
1221
Antony, Mark,
203
,
304
,
523
,
779–80
,
830
,
838
,
975
,
1020
,
1113
Apelles (Greek painter),
1056
Apion (Greek grammarian),
531–3
Apollidon,
343
Apollodorus (grammarian of Athens),
165
,
413
,
606
Apollonius of Thyna (Pythagorean philosopher),
506
,
736
,
1146
Appian of Alexandria (historian),
148–9
,
781
Apuleius,
645
Aracus (Spartan admiral),
139
Arcesilaus (Greek philosopher),
169
,
273
,
387
,
472–3
,
546
,
566
,
652
,
657
,
1013
,
1127
Archelaus (King of Macedonia),
955
Archelaus (physician, philosopher),
627
Archias (Theban tyrant),
409
Archias,
409
Archidamus (King of Sparta),
77
,
341
Archilochus (Greek poet),
560
Archo (Aenian wife of Poris),
793
Archytas of Tarentum (philosopher and mathematician),
812
,
1116
Arethus (friend of Eudamidas),
214–15
Arethusa,
522
Aretino, Pietro,
344
Argelionidis (Spartan mother of Brasidas),
286
Argenterius (physician),
873
Ariadne (myth. daughter of Minos),
943
Ariminius (German chieftain),
891
Ariovistus (German chieftain),
840
Arisogiton,
211
Aristarchus of Samothrace (grammarian),
1220
Aristides (Athenian statesman),
278
,
822
Aristippus (Cyrenaic philosopher),
57
,
173–4
,
192
,
208
,
479
,
655–6
,
738
,
968
,
1000
,
1116
,
1119
,
1258
Aristodemus (King of the Messenians),
953
Aristodemus (Spartan soldier),
259
Ariston (tragic actor),
198
Ariston of Chios (Stoic philosopher),
160
,
341
,
575–6
,
596
,
654
,
764
,
955
,
968
,
1119
Ariston (disciple of Critolaus),
584
Ariston (father of Plato),
596
Aristotle,
xii–xxxviii
,
li
,
13
,
102
,
130
,
153
,
163–4
,
170
,
183
,
207
,
230–31
,
349
,
426
,
434
,
451
,
480
,
513
,
516
,
519
,
542
,
545
,
575
,
606
,
610
,
621
,
627
,
643
,
705
,
728
,
785
,
788
,
809
,
816
,
912
,
959
,
993
,
1018
,
1021
,
1050
,
1083
,
1096
,
1097
,
1126
,
1178
,
1191
,
1195
,
1199
,
1205
,
1212
,
1218
,
1228
,
1247
,
1257
