Asked whom he ranks highest among all the men who have come to his knowledge, Montaigne names three, and the first is Homer. He will not settle whether Virgil might equal Homer in his own art; he understands only one of them. Still Virgil draws body and matter from one touch of the Iliad, and Homer is guide and teacher. Blind, poor, and living before the sciences were reduced into rule, Homer instructed those who later established governments, carried on wars, and wrote of religion or philosophy. His words, according to Aristotle, are the only words that have motion and action. Alexander, finding a rich cabinet among Darius's spoils, reserved it to keep his Homer in, and called him the most faithful counsellor in military affairs. Alcibiades boxed the ear of a man who pretended to learning and had no Homer in the house. Seven Grecian cities contended for his birth. Children are still called Hector and Achilles. Mohammed II, writing to Pope Pius II, claimed common descent from the Trojans and a duty to revenge the blood of Hector.
The second is Alexander. He began his enterprises young, with small means, and by three-and-thirty had passed victorious through the habitable earth. Fortune favoured hazardous, even rash, exploits. Montaigne lists justice, temperance, liberality, truth in his word, love toward his own people, and humanity toward those he overcame. He also names the sallies that cannot be well excused: the ruin of Thebes and Persepolis, the murder of Menander and of Ephistion's physician, the massacre of Persian prisoners and of Cossian children. As to Clytus, the fault was more than redeemed. It was ingeniously said that he had his virtues from Nature, his vices from Fortune. Caesar alone could make Montaigne doubtful in the choice. They were two fires, or two torrents, overrunning the world by several ways. Caesar's ambition, even if more moderate, still had the ruin of his country and mischief to the world for its object, so the balance inclines to Alexander.
The third, and in Montaigne's opinion the most excellent, is Epaminondas. Of glory he has not near so much as the other two. Of valour planted by wisdom in a regular soul, he had all that could be imagined. The Greeks pronounced him the greatest man of their nation. Never any man knew so much and spoke so little; when he did speak, never any man spoke better. In manners and conscience he surpassed all who undertook the management of affairs, and comes not short of Socrates himself. Innocence in this man is sovereign, constant, and uniform; in Alexander it appears subaltern, uncertain, and variable. Antiquity finds in other captains some peculiar quality that illustrates the name; in this man only a full and equal virtue throughout, whether in peace or war. Montaigne looks upon the obstinate poverty as a little too scrupulous to imitate. Scipio Aemilianus might be put in the other scale. For a gentleman of civilian manners and moderate ambition, Alcibiades has the richest life Montaigne knows. Epaminondas declared that the greatest satisfaction of his whole life was the contentment he gave his father and mother by the victory at Leuctra. He did not think it lawful, even to restore the liberty of his country, to kill a man without knowing a cause, which made him cold in Pelopidas's enterprise for the relief of Thebes. He held that men in battle ought to spare a friend on the contrary side. After he had forced the Lacedaemonians at the pass near Corinth, he contented himself with charging through them without pursuing to the utmost. The Boeotians took his commission of general for that humanity, then had, for shame, to restore it. Victory attended him like a shadow wherever he went. Homer still feeds children their names. Alexander's medals still passed as luck-charms after death. The prosperity of Epaminondas's country, derived from him, died with him.
