The familiarity Montaigne has with Seneca and Plutarch, and the assistance they have lent to his age and to his book, wholly compiled of what he borrowed from them, oblige him to stand up for their honour. Among pamphlets of the so-called reformed religion he has seen one that, to parallel poor King Charles IX with Nero, compares the late Cardinal of Lorraine with Seneca, both prime ministers, their manners very near alike. In his opinion that does the cardinal a very great honour. He esteems the cardinal's wit, eloquence, and zeal, yet does not think his capacity near Seneca's, nor his virtue so clean, entire, or steady. The book borrows its approaches from Dion the historian, whose testimony Montaigne does not believe. Dion is inconsistent: one while Seneca is very wise and a mortal enemy to Nero's vices, elsewhere avaricious, an usurer, a false pretender to philosophy. Seneca's virtue appears vivid in his writings, and his vindication of riches is clear. It is more reasonable to believe Roman historians than Greeks and foreigners. Tacitus and the rest speak honourably of Seneca's life and death. Dion dares to maintain Julius Caesar's cause against Pompey, and Antony against Cicero.
Jean Bodin is a good author of greater judgment than the scribblers of his age, yet a little bold in his Method of history. He accuses Plutarch not only of ignorance, which Montaigne would have let alone, but of writing things incredible and absolutely fabulous. If he had said Plutarch delivered things otherwise than they are, that would be no great reproach: what we have not seen we take upon trust, and Plutarch sometimes variously relates the same story, as Hannibal's judgment of the three best captains, one way in Flaminius and another in Pyrrhus. To charge him with taking incredible and impossible things for current pay is to accuse the most judicious author of want of judgment. Bodin's example is the Lacedaemonian boy who suffered a stolen fox-cub to tear out his bowels rather than discover the theft. Montaigne finds the example ill chosen: the soul's faculties are hard to limit. He would rather have chosen a bodily wonder, such as Pyrrhus cleaving an armed man from crown to seat. Plutarch and Cicero, who was upon the spot, already tell of children whipped before the altar of Diana till the blood ran, without a groan, some till they lost their lives, and of a boy who let a burning coal consume his sleeve rather than spoil a sacrifice. Marcellinus's Egyptians would not tell their names under torment. A Spanish peasant, racked for the murder of the Praetor Lucius Piso, would give no word of confession, then beat out his own brains against a wall. Epicharis underwent Nero's racks a whole day without a syllable, then hanged herself with the lace of her robe. Montaigne's troopers in the civil wars, and simple peasants who endured soles broiled on a gridiron, fingers crushed with a pistol cock, and eyes squeezed by a cord, before they would consent to a ransom, match that Spartan patience. He has seen one of the richest husbandmen left for dead in a ditch, dragged at a horse's tail with a halter still about a blackened neck, who would rather die a thousand deaths than promise anything. Gascon women, he says, you might sooner make eat fire than forsake an opinion conceived in anger. Obstinacy is the sister of constancy, at least in vigour.
We are not to judge what is possible according to what is credible to our own apprehension. Most men make a difficulty of believing in another what they could not or would not do themselves. Every one thinks the sovereign stamp of human nature is imprinted in him, and that proceedings unlike his are feigned and false. Dangerous and intolerable folly. Montaigne considers some men infinitely beyond him, especially among the ancients; he cannot come near them by a thousand paces, yet keeps them in sight. Bodin's other fabulous example, Agesilaus fined by the Ephori for engrossing the citizens' hearts, shows no sign of falsity: Greece punished men for being too acceptable, witness ostracism and petalism. Bodin further says Plutarch paralleled Romans with Romans and Greeks with Greeks sincerely, but favoured the Greeks when pairing Demosthenes with Cicero, Cato with Aristides, Sylla with Lysander, Marcellus with Pelopidas, Pompey with Agesilaus. This attacks what in Plutarch is most excellent. The shining lustre of Roman names makes Demosthenes seem unable to rival a consul; if a man balances manners, natures, and parts rather than fortunes, Cicero and the elder Cato come far short of the men with whom they are compared. Plutarch does not make them equal. He does not believe Xenophon himself would dare to bring Pompey's victories into comparison with Agesilaus. Lysander only gained two naval battles. There is no preference in general. He only compares the pieces and circumstances one after another, and gives of every one a particular and separate judgment. If anyone would convict him of partiality, they ought to pick out some one of those particular judgments, or say he was mistaken in comparing such a Greek to such a Roman, when there were others more fit.
