The Complete Essays (70 page)

To return to my subject, [A] it seems to me right, somehow, that women should have no mastery over men save only the natural one of motherhood – unless it be for the chastisement of those who have wilfully submitted to them out of some feverish humour; but that does not apply to old women, the subject of our present discussion. It is the manifest truth of this consideration which has made us so ready to invent and entrench that Salic Law – which nobody has ever seen – which debars women from succeeding to our throne;
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and though Fortune has lent it more credence in some places than others, there is scarcely one jurisdiction in the world where that law is not cited as here, because of the genuine appearance of reason which gives it authority.

It is dangerous to leave the superintendence of our succession to the judgement of our wives and to their choice between our sons, which over and over again is iniquitous and fantastic. For those unruly tastes and physical cravings which they experience during pregnancy are ever-present in their souls. They regularly devote themselves to the weakest and to the feeblest, or to those (if they have any) who are still hanging about their necks. Since women do not have sufficient reasoning-power to select and embrace things according to their merits they allow themselves to be led to where natural impressions act most alone – like animals, which only know their young while they are still on the teat.
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Incidentally, experience clearly shows us that the natural love to which we attach such importance has very shallow roots. For a very small sum of money we daily tear their own children out of women’s arms and get them to take charge of our own; we make them entrust their babes to some wretched wet-nurse to whom we have no wish to commit our own or else to a nanny-goat; then we forbid them not only to give suck to theirs no matter what harm it might do them but even to look after them; they must devote themselves entirely to the service of our children. And then we see that in most cases custom begets a kind of bastard love more distracted than the natural kind; they are far more worried about the preservation of those foster-children than of the children who really belong to them.

I mentioned nanny-goats because the village-women where I live call in the help of goats when they cannot suckle their children themselves; I have now two menservants who never tasted mothers’ milk for more than a week. These nanny-goats are trained from the outset to suckle human children; they recognize their voices when they start crying and come running up. They reject any other child you give them except the one they are feeding; the child does the same to another nanny-goat. The other day I saw an infant who had lost its own nanny-goat as the father had only borrowed it from a neighbour: the child rejected a different one which was provided and died, certainly of hunger.

The beasts debase and bastardize maternal affection as easily as we do.

[C] Herodotus tells of a certain district of Libya where men lie with women indiscriminately, but where, once a child can toddle, it recognizes its own father out of the crowd, natural instinct guiding its first footsteps.
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There are frequent mistakes, I believe…

[A] Now once we consider the fact that we love our children simply because we begot them, calling them our second selves, we can see that we also produce something else from ourselves, no less worthy of commendation: for the things we engender in our soul, the offspring of our mind, of our wisdom and talents, are the products of a part more noble than the body and are more purely our own. In this act of generation we are both mother and father; these ‘children’ cost us dearer and, if they are any good, bring us more honour. In the case of our other children their good qualities belong much more to them than to us: we have only a very slight share in them; but in the case of these, all their grace, worth and beauty belong to us. For this reason they have a more lively resemblance and correspondence to us. [C] Plato adds that such children are immortal and immortalize their fathers – even deifying them, as in the case of Lycurgus, Solon and Minos.
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[A] Since our history books are full of exemplary cases of the common kind of paternal love, it seemed to me not inappropriate to cite a few examples of this other kind too.

[C] Heliodorus, that good bishop of Tricca, preferred to forego the honour of so venerable a bishopric with its income and its dignity rather than to destroy his ‘daughter’, who still lives on – a handsome girl but attired perhaps with a little more care and indulgence than suits the daughter of a priest, of a clerk in holy orders – and fashioned in too erotic a style.
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[A] In Rome there was a figure of great bravery and dignity called Labienus;
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among other qualities he excelled in every kind of literature; he was, I think, the son of that great Labienus who was the foremost among captains who served under Caesar in the Gallic Wars, subsequently threw in his lot with Pompey the Great and fought for him most bravely until Caesar defeated him in Spain. There were several people who were jealous of the Labienus I am referring to; he also probably had enemies among the courtiers and favourites of the contemporary Emperors for his frankness and for inheriting his father’s innate hostility towards tyranny, which we
may believe coloured his books and writing. His enemies prosecuted him before the Roman magistrates and obtained a conviction, requiring several of the books he had published to be burnt. This was the very first case of the death-penalty being inflicted on books and erudition; it was subsequently applied at Rome in several other cases. We did not have means nor matter enough for our cruelty unless we also let it concern itself with things which Nature has exempted from any sense of pain, such as our renown and the products of our minds, and unless we inflicted physical suffering on the teachings and the documents of the Muses.

Labienus could not bear such a loss nor survive such beloved offspring; he had himself borne to the family vault on a litter and shut up alive; there he provided his own death and burial. It is difficult to find any example of fatherly love more vehement than that one. When his very eloquent friend Cassius Severus saw those books being burnt, he shouted that he too ought to be burnt alive with them since he actively preserved their contents in his memory.

[B] A similar misfortune happened to Greuntius Cordus who was accused of having praised Brutus and Cassius in his books.
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That slavish base and corrupt Senate (worthy of a worse master than Tiberius) condemned his writings to the pyre: it pleased him to keep his books company as they perished in the flames by starving himself to death.

[A] Lucan was a good man, condemned by that blackguard Nero; in the last moments of his life, when most of his blood had already gushed from his veins (he had ordered his doctors to kill him by slashing them) and when cold had already seized his hands and feet and was starting to draw near to his vital organs, the very last thing he remembered were some verses from his
Pharsalian War
; he recited them, and died with them as the last words on his lips. Was that not saying farewell to his children tenderly and paternally, the equivalent of those adieus and tender embraces which we keep for our children when we die, as well as being an effect of that natural instinct to recall at our end those things which we held dearest to us while we lived?

When Epicurus lay dying, tormented they say by the most extreme colic paroxysms, he found consolation only in the beauty of the philosophy he had taught to the world;
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are we to believe that he would have found happiness in any number of well-born, well-educated children (if he had
had any) to equal what he found in the abundant writing which he had brought forth? And if he had had the choice of leaving either an ill-conceived and deformed child behind him or a stupid and inept book, would – not he alone but any man of similar ability – have preferred to incur the first tragedy rather than the other?

It would probably have been impious of Saint Augustine (for example) if someone had obliged him to destroy either his children (supposing he had had any) or else his writings (from which our religion receives such abundant profit) and he had not preferred to destroy his children.
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[B] I am not at all sure whether I would not much rather have given birth to one perfectly formed son by commerce with the Muses than by commerce with my wife. [C] As for this present child of my brain, what I give it I give unconditionally and irrevocably, just as one does to the children of one’s body; such little good as I have already done it is no longer mine to dispose of; it may know plenty of things which I know no longer, and remember things about me that I have forgotten; if the need arose to turn to it for help, it would be like borrowing from a stranger. It is richer than I am, yet I am wiser than it.

[A] Few devotees of poetry would not have been more gratified at fathering the
Aeneid
than the fairest boy in Rome, nor fail to find the loss of one more bearable than the other. [C] For according to Aristotle, of all artists the one who is most in love with his handiwork is the poet.
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[A] It is hard to believe that Epaminondas (who boasted that his posterity consisted in two ‘daughters’ who would bring honour to their father one day – he meant his two noble victories over the Spartans) would have agreed to exchange them for daughters who were the most gorgeous in the whole of Greece; or that Alexander and Caesar had ever wished they could give up the greatness of their glorious feats in war in return for the pleasure of having sons and heirs however perfect, however accomplished; indeed I very much doubt whether Phidias or any other outstanding sculptor would have found as much delight in the survival and longevity of his physical children as in some excellent piece of sculpture brought to completion by his long-sustained labour and his skill according to the rules of his art.

And as for those raging vicious passions which have sometimes inflamed fathers with love for their daughters, or mothers for their sons, similar ones
can be found in this other kind of parenthood: witness the tale of Pygmalion who, having carved the statue of a uniquely beautiful woman, was so hopelessly ravished by an insane love for his own work that, for the sake of his frenzy, the gods had to bring her to life:

Tentatum mollescit ebur, positoque rigore
Subsedit digitis
.

[He touches the ivory statue; it starts to soften; its hardness gone, it yields to his fingers.]
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9. On the armour of the Parthians

[French knights, thinking more of protecting their bodies than going over to the attack, wore increasingly heavy plate-armour. Montaigne had little trust in armour, not least when worn by men out of training.]

(A] The vile and thoroughly enervating practice of our noblemen today is never to don their armour until the very last second when absolutely necessary, and to throw it off as soon as there is the slightest sign of the danger being past. This results in chaos. What with everyone rushing about calling for his armour at the very moment of the attack, some are still lacing up their breast-plates after their companions have already been routed. Our forebears used to have their helmets, lances and gauntlets carried for them, but kept on the rest of their armour until they had finished their stint. Our cavalry units are in confusion and disorder, all mixed up together with the baggage-train and the batmen who cannot go far from their officers because they are carrying their armour for them [C]. Livy was talking of our soldiers when he said:
‘Intolerantissima laboris corpora vix arma humeris gerebant’
[Their bodies being utterly incapable of toil, their shoulders can hardly bear the weight of their armour.]
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[A] Several peoples used to go to war unprotected or wearing things which afforded no protection; they still do:

[B]
Tegmina queis capitum raptus de subere cortex.

[With helmets made of cork stripped from the tree.]
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Alexander, the most daring captain ever, rarely wore armour. [A] And those among us who despise it do not much weaken their bargaining-power! Although we do see a man killed occasionally for want of armour, we hardly find fewer who were killed because they were encumbered by it, slowed down by its weight, rubbed sore or worn out by it, struck by a blow glancing off it, or in some other way. It would seem indeed, given
the weight and thickness of our armour, that we have no thought of anything but defending ourselves, [C] and that we are not so much covered as laden with it. [A] Impeded and constrained by it, we have enough to do to support its weight,
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as if fighting merely consisted in receiving blows on our armour [Al] and as if we were not equally beholden to defend it as it is to defend us.

[B] Tacitus amusingly describes the warriors of our Ancient Gaul, armed so as not to yield ground but no more, having no means of striking a blow nor of being struck by one nor of getting up once they were down. When Lucullus saw certain Median men-at-arms, drawn up facing the army of Tigranes clad in heavy awkward armour as though in an iron prison, he formed the opinion that he could easily defeat them and began his victory by charging against them.
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[A] And now that our musketeers are so highly prized, I think that we will discover some new invention to wall us up against them, making us drag ourselves off to war enclosed in little forts such as those which the Ancients made their elephants carry.

Such a humour is far removed from that of Scipio the Younger,
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who harshly rebuked his soldiers for having sown spiked cavalry-traps under water at the spot where the inhabitants of the town under siege could make sorties against him through the moat: he said assailants should have thoughts not of dread but of plans of attack, [C] rightly fearing that their precautions might deaden their vigilance during their guard-duty. [B] And he also said to a young man who was showing off his shield: ‘It is a very fine one, my lad: but a Roman soldier must have more trust in his right arm than his left.’
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[A] Now what makes our armour an intolerable burden to us is want of habit:

L’husbergo in dosso haveano, e l’elmo in testa,
Dui di quelli guerrier, de i quali io canto.
Ne notte o di, doppo ch’entraro in questa
Stanza, gli haveanò mai mesi da canto,
Che facile a portar comme la vesta
Era lor, perche in uso I’avean tanto.

[The two warriors of whom I sing both were clad in hauberks with helmets on their heads; since entering their redoubt they had never taken them off, night or day, wearing them as easily as their clothing, so accustomed had they grown to them.]
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[C] And the Emperor Caracalla marched in full armour through the countryside at the head of his troops. [A] The Roman foot-soldiers not only bore iron helmets, swords and shields (for, says Cicero, they were so used, where their equipment was concerned, to have it ever on their backs, that it bothered them no more than their limbs did – [C]
‘arma enim membra militis esse dicunt’
[for a soldier’s weapons are called his very limbs] [A] but they also had to carry their rations for a fortnight and a fixed quantity of stakes to make defence-works, [B] weighing up to sixty pounds. And the soldiers of Marius, thus laden,
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were trained to march five leagues in five hours – or six leagues when it was necessary to hurry. [A] Their military training was much tougher than ours and produced very different results. It is wonderfully instructive in this connection that a Spartan soldier was criticized for having been seen sheltering in a house while on a military expedition: they were so trained to hardship that it appeared shameful to be seen sheltering beneath any roof but the sky, no matter what the weather. [C] Scipio the Younger, when he was reforming his army in Spain, commanded his soldiers to eat only on their feet and to eat nothing cooked. [A] We would not get our men to go very far at that rate!
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Moreover Marcellinus, a man brought up in the Roman wars, carefully noted the Parthian way of bearing arms, all the more so as it was very different from that of the Romans.
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‘They have,’ he said, ‘armour plaited together like fine plumage which did not impede the movements of their bodies; yet it was so strong that our darts bounced off it when they
happened to strike it.’ (The armoured scales which our ancestors made much use of were just like that.) Elsewhere he says: ‘They had strong tough horses, clad in thick leather; they themselves were armed from head to foot in thick iron-plating so skilfully arranged that it lent itself to movement at their joints. You could have taken them for iron men; so closely fitted was the armour of their head, reproducing the shape of their facial features, that there was no means of landing a blow except through the tiny round holes which corresponded to their eyes and let in a little light and through the slits where their nostrils were, through which with some difficulty they could breathe’:

[B]
Flexilis inductis animatur lamina membris,
Horribilis visu; credas simulachra moveri
Ferrea, cognatoque viros spirare metallo.
Par vestitus equis: ferrata fronte minantur,
Ferratosque movent, securi vulneris, armos.

[The flexile iron-plating is brought to life by the limbs it encloses. A sight to strike terror: you could believe that iron statues were moving, the metal incorporate and breathing. Their horses are similarly armed: their iron-clad foreheads threaten, and they move their flanks, safely protected from wounds by iron.]
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[A] There you have a description which strongly resembles the way a French knight is equipped with all his bits of armour. Plutarch
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says that Demetrius had made for himself and for Alcinus, the foremost soldier about him, two complete suits of armour each weighing one hundred and twenty-five pounds, whereas the normal armour weighed only sixty.
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