The Complete Essays (64 page)

[C] Vibius Virius, despairing of saving his city, Capua, which was besieged by the Romans or of obtaining mercy for it, spoke up in the last debate held in their Senate, made several exhortations suggesting his conclusion and ended by declaring that the finest thing to do was to escape their fortune by their own hands: their enemies would hold them in honour and Hannibal would realize what faithful allies he had deserted. He invited those who approved of his counsel to come and partake of a good supper already prepared in his home and then, after making good cheer, they would all drink together from the cup he would offer them: ‘It is a drink that will deliver our bodies from torment, our souls from insults and our eyes and our ears from knowledge of the base evils which the vanquished have to suffer from enemies, cruel and incensed. I have,’ he said, ‘arranged for there to be men able to throw us on to a funeral pyre before my door once we have breathed our last.’

Many gave their approval to this high resolution but few imitated him. Twenty-seven senators did follow him and, after assaying to stifle their dreadful thoughts in wine, they finished their meal with that deadly drink; they lamented together their country’s misfortunes and embraced each other; then some withdrew to their homes while the others remained behind to be laid with Vibius on his flaming pyre. All of them were so long a-dying, since the fumes of the wine had blocked their arteries and retarded the effects of the poison, that some came within an hour of seeing their enemies in Capua (which was taken the next day) and of incurring the very miseries they had fled from at such a cost.

When the Consul Fulvius was returning from the disgraceful butchering of two hundred and twenty-five senators, Taurea Jubellius, another citizen from those parts, called him back by name fiercely, made him stop, then
said: ‘Command them to add me to so great a massacre so that you can at least boast of killing a man more valiant than you are.’ Fulvius treated him with disdain, as a madman (since his hands were bound by a letter just arrived from Rome condemning the inhumanity of his action); Jubellius went on: ‘My country is occupied; my friends are dead; although I have killed my wife and children by my own hand to save them from the desolation of this defeat, it is forbidden me to die the same death as my fellow-citizens; so let Virtue lend me the means to take vengeance on this odious life.’ And drawing a sword which he had concealed he ran it through his bosom and fell dying at the consul’s feet.

[B] Alexander was besieging a town in India: those within the town, finding themselves hard-pressed, vigorously resolved to deprive him of the joy of victory, and – despite his humanity – they all set fire to their town and burned themselves to death. A new kind of war: the enemy fought to save them: they, to destroy themselves; to ensure that they died they did all that men normally do to protect their lives.

[C] Astapa, a town in Spain, had walls and defence-works too weak to withstand the Romans so the inhabitants made a pile of their valuables and movable goods in the market-place and placed their wives and children on top of the heap, surrounding it with wood and other materials which catch fire easily; then, leaving behind fifty younger men to carry out their plan, they made a sortie during which, as they had sworn to do, they all sought death, not being able to win the battle. The fifty young men, having first massacred every living soul scattered about their town, set fire to the heap and then threw themselves upon it, so bringing their great-hearted freedom to an end in insentience rather than in shame and sorrow; they showed their enemies that if it had pleased Fortune they would have been as brave in wresting victory from them as they had been in frustrating them of a victory which was horrifying and indeed mortal to those who had fallen for the bait of the glittering gold melting in those flames and who had crowded round it, only to be suffocated and burned to death, unable to draw back because of the crowd behind them.

The citizens of Abydoss, invested by Philip, made the same resolution. But they had too little time. King Philip, horrified by the desperate haste of their preparations (and having already seized the treasures and the portable property they had each condemned to destruction by fire or water) withdrew his soldiers and allowed the townsfolk three days’ grace to kill themselves, days which they filled with blood and murder exceeding any enemy’s cruelty; not one person was saved who had power over himself.

There are countless similar examples of mass resolution: they seem all the more horrible for applying to everyone; but they are less horrible in fact than when done individually. What reason cannot do for each man separately it can do for them all together, their enthusiasm as a group ravishing each individual judgement.

[B] In the time of Tiberius the condemned men who waited to be executed forfeited their property and were denied funeral rites: those who anticipated it by killing themselves were buried and allowed to make a will.

[A] But sometimes we can desire death out of hope for a greater good: ‘I want’, said St Paul, ‘to be loosened asunder so as to be with Jesus Christ,’ and, ‘Who shall deliver me from these bonds?’ Cleombrotus Ambraciota, having read the
Phaedo
of Plato, entered into so great a yearning for the life to come that, without further cause, he cast himself into the sea. [C] That clearly shows how incorrect we are to call this deliberate ‘loosening asunder’ despair: we are often brought to it by a burning hope – often, also, by a calm and certain propensity of our judgement.
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[A] During the journey to Outremer made by Saint Louis, Jacques du Chastel the Bishop of Soissons saw that the King and the whole army were preparing to return to France leaving their religious affairs unfinished; he resolved, rather, to leave for Paradise: having said God speed to his friends, he charged single-handed into the enemy in full view of everyone and was cut to pieces.
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[C] In one particular kingdom in a recently discovered country
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there is a day of solemn procession during which the idol that is worshipped there is carried in public on a festival-car of astonishing dimensions; many can be seen cutting off chunks of their living flesh to offer to the idol and, in addition, a number of others prostrate themselves in the main square to be crushed and smashed to pieces by the wheels in order to win such veneration as saints after their death as is indeed rendered to them.

The death of that Bishop, arms in hand, has more nobility but implies less pain, since the zeal of battle would have partly deadened his sense of feeling.

[A] Some forms of government have been concerned to decide when suicide may be legal and opportune. In our own city of Marseilles in former times they used to keep a supply of a poison based on hemlock always available at public expense to all those who wished to hasten their days; they first had to get their reasons approved by their Senate (called the Six Hundred); it was not permissible to lay hands on oneself, save by leave of the magistrate and for lawful reasons.
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This same law was also found elsewhere. When sailing to Asia, Sextus Pompeius went via the island of Cea in the Aegean. As one of his company tells us, it chanced when Pompeius was there that a woman of great authority, who had just explained to the citizens why she had decided to die, begged him to honour her death with his presence; which he did; and having long vainly assayed to deflect her from her purpose with his eloquence (at which he was wonderfully proficient) and with his powers of dissuasion, he finally allowed her to do what pleased her. She had lived to be ninety, blessed in mind and body; now she was lying on her bed (made more ornate than usual) and was propped up on her elbow. ‘Sextus Pompeius,’ she said, ‘may the gods be kind to you (especially the gods I leave behind rather than those I am about to discover) for you did not despise being my counsellor in life and my witness in death. For my part I have assayed only the kindlier face of Fortune; fearing that the desire to go on living might make me see an adverse one, I am with this happy death giving leave of absence to the remnant of my soul and leaving behind me two daughters and a legion of grandchildren.’ She then addressed her relations, urging them to agree in peace and unity; divided her property and commended her household gods to her elder daughter; then with a steady hand she took the cup containing the poison; and having addressed her vows to Mercury, praying to be taken to some seat of happiness in the next world, she abruptly swallowed that mortal potion. She then kept the company informed of the progress of the poison as it worked through her body, telling how her limbs grew cold, one after another, until she was finally able to say it had reached her inward parts and her heart; whereupon she called on her daughters to do one last duty: to close her eyes.

Pliny gives an account of a certain Hyperborean people whose climate is
so temperate that the inhabitants do not usually die before they actually want to; when they become weary, having had their fill of life and reached an advanced age, they hold a joyful celebration and then leap into the sea from a high cliff set aside for this purpose.
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[B] Of all incitements [C] unbearable [B] pain and a worse death seem to me the most pardonable.

4. ‘Work can wait till tomorrow’

[Montaigne discovered Amyot’s French translation of Plutarch’s
Lives
and his
Moral Works
after he had embarked on the
Essays.
His respect for Plutarch’s wisdom and style does not stop him from drawing different moral conclusions from his examples. On the contrary: he is moved to imitate and rival Plutarch’s admired wisdom and judgement. Amyot’s translation was, even at the time, criticized for inaccuracy: Montaigne, without comparing it in scholarly detail with the Greek, is sure that Amyot had grasped the essence of Plutarch’s mind. Both French and English readers have indeed found in Amyot’s Plutarch a lasting source of pleasure and wisdom – North’s famous English Plutarch is translated from Amyot’s French, not from the original Greek. Scholars can, did and do find errors in them both, but it is they who are read, not Xylander or Cruserius or even more recent translators from among the scholars.]

[A] It seems to me that I am justified in awarding the palm, above all our writers in French, to Jacques Amyot, not merely for the simplicity and purity of his language in which he excels all others, nor for his constancy during such a long piece of work, nor for the profundity of his knowledge in being able to disentangle an author so complex and thorny (for you can say what you like: I cannot understand the Greek, but everywhere in his translation I see a meaning so beautiful, so coherent and so consistent with itself that either he has definitely understood the true meaning of his author or else, from a long frequentation with him, he has planted in his own soul a vigorous generic Idea of Plutarch’s, and has at least foisted upon him nothing which belies him or contradicts him); but above all I am grateful to him for having chosen and selected so worthy and so appropriate a book to present to his country. Ignorant people like us would have been lost if that book had not brought us up out of the mire: thanks to it, we now dare to speak and to write – and the ladies teach the dominies; it is our breviary.

If that good man is still alive I would assign him Xenophon to do just as well with: that is an easier task – one therefore all the more suited to his advanced years. And it somehow seems to me that, even though Amyot can slip very briskly and neatly round some tight corners, his style is nevertheless more at home when it is untrammelled and can roll easily along.

I recently came upon the passage where Plutarch tells us that when he
himself was delivering a declamation in Rome Rusticus, who was in the audience, received a packet of letters from the Emperor and put off opening it until the end. For which, he says, all the audience most highly praised the dignity of that man. Indeed, since Plutarch was on the subject of curiosity (that avid passion, greedy for news, which leads us to drop everything indiscriminately and impatiently so as to entertain every newcomer and, losing all sense of respect and politeness, to tear open the letters they bring us no matter where we may be) he was right to praise Rusticus’ dignity; and he could also have gone on to praise his decency and his courtesy in not wanting to interrupt his declamation.
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But I doubt whether Rusticus could be praised for his wisdom: for since he was receiving those letters unexpectedly, and from an Emperor at that, to put off reading them might have had grave consequences.

The opposite vice to curiosity is lack of concern, [B] which my complexion manifestly inclines me to, and [A] which is so extreme in many men I have known that you can find them with unopened letters in their pockets brought three or four days earlier.

[B] I not only never open any letter entrusted to me but not even any which Fortune may pass through my hands; I feel guilty if, when standing beside some great man, my eyes inadvertently thieve some knowledge from the important letter he is reading. Never was anyone less inquisitive, less given to poking about in another man’s affairs.

[A] In our fathers’ time Monsieur de Boutières nearly lost Turin because he was enjoying good company at dinner and put off reading a warning sent to him of some treachery being plotted against that town, which was under his command. And I also learned from Plutarch that Julius Caesar would have saved himself if he had read a note which was handed to him that day on his way to the Senate where the conspirators killed him.
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Plutarch relates too how Archias, the Theban Tyrant, on the evening before Pelopidas executed his plan to kill him and so restore freedom to his country, was written to by another Archias, an Athenian, to inform him point by point of what was being prepared against him. This missive was delivered to him during dinner; he put off opening it, saying words which later became Greek proverb: ‘Work can wait till tomorrow.’
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In my opinion a wise man can (out of concern for others, such as not impolitely interrupting a social event, as was Rusticus’ case, or so as not to break into some other affair of importance) put off reading any news brought to him; but, particularly if he holds some public office, to do so for his own interest or pleasure – not interrupting his dinner or even his sleep – is unpardonable. And in ancient Rome the ‘consular place’ as they called it was the most honoured seat at table, since it was the one most readily accessible to those who might come [C] and consult the man seated there.
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[A] Which shows that even at table the Romans did not cut themselves off from dealing with other matters and with unexpected occurrences.
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But when all has been said, it is not easy in any human activity to lay down a rule so well grounded on reasoned argument that Fortune fails to maintain her rights over it.