No man is free from speaking foolish things, Montaigne says, but the worst is labouring to play the fool. His own slips pass cheaply. Treachery should still revolt when it pays. Word comes from Germany that the Romans might rid themselves of Arminius by poison, the man who had broken them under Varus. Tiberius answers that Rome revenges by open ways, with swords in hand, not by fraud, and thereby quits the profitable for the honest. Montaigne grants he may have been a braggadocio; virtue is still valid in the mouth of a man who hates it. Our being is cemented with sickly qualities, and governments need vicious offices as poisons conserve health; let the strongest take the commission to betray, lie, and massacre. Judges who bait a confession with false pardon wound justice itself. Montaigne would hardly betray his prince for a particular man, nor a particular man for his prince. In the little he has mediated between Navarre and Guise, he would rather fail in the affair than be wanting to himself, a novice of stiff opinion and no bribes. In need he would hold one candle to Saint Michael and another to his dragon, and follow the right side even to the fire, but exclusively if he can. Atticus saved himself by moderation; Gelo of Syracuse waiting at Delphi to join the victors may pass in a neighbour's war, not in one's own. The Bishop of Orleans showed that the storm may fly over a temperate head.
It belongs to kings to quarrel with kings. We are not to call peevishness duty, nor treacherous conduct courage; they kindle a war not because it is just, but because it is war. Montaigne will swim in troubled waters without fishing in them, and says nothing to one side he may not say to the other. Philippides, asked by Lysimachus what of his estate he should bestow, said, What you will, provided it be none of your secrets. Princes do not accept men by halves; the laws have chosen Montaigne a master, and actions must receive public commission even if the will inclines elsewhere. Innocence itself could not, in this age, negotiate without dissimulation. Counterfeit liberty is Aesop's ass, who clapped his forefeet on his master's shoulders and took the cudgel. Dandamis judged Socrates, Pythagoras, and Diogenes great except that they were too much subjected to the laws. Two pretenders to Thrace fall into dispute; one kills the other at a feast. What the Romans cannot do legitimately they resolve to do by treachery. Pomponius Flaccus is found a fit instrument.
Flaccus draws the rival into his toils and sends him bound to Rome. Let who will be Pomponius Flaccus; Montaigne will not. If they employed him to lie, betray, and forswear, though not to poison, he would say, send me rather to the galleys. The Lacedaemonians told Antipater that ruinous taxes might be imposed, but shameful commands would lose their time. As much as the public affairs are bettered by the exploit, so much are your own the worse, and the same person who set you on work may ruin you. Jaropelk has the Hungarian's eyes bored out after Vislicza is sacked; Antigonus destroys the Argyraspides who delivered Eumenes; Sylla's freed slave is thrown from the Tarpeian rock; Clovis hangs Cararie's servants with the purse about their necks; Mohammed II lets the mother rip out the murderer's heart. Because the daughter of Sejanus was a virgin, the hangman first ravished her, then strangled her. Some of Amurath I's subjects would rather be thought guilty of another's parricide than serve justice by a parricide of their own. A prince forced to break faith must feel it as a lash of the divine rod; if he did it without regret, his conscience is in a sorry condition. No private utility is worth straining conscience that far; the public may be, when very manifest and of very great concern.
Timoleon weeps that it was with a fraternal hand he slew the tyrant. Corinth sends him to Sicily with a split verdict pending: deliverer of his country or murderer of his brother, according as he behaves. The Roman Senate taxes cities that had already paid Sylla for their liberty: the pedagogue whips the scholar for docility. An oath made to robbers still binds once fear leaves the tongue. Epaminondas never killed a man he had overcome, and in the heat of battle could turn aside from friend and guest; there is something unlawful even against an enemy. Montaigne abominates Lucan's mad exhortation that no father's face should move you while swords glitter. One of Pompey's soldiers, having killed his brother unawares, killed himself; years later another demanded a reward for the same. Utility does not make an action obligatory for all. Marriage is named the most necessary bond for human society, yet the council of the saints excludes it from the most venerable vocation, as we design those horses for stallions of which we have the least esteem.
