the fame” to which the personage had aspired. La Boëtie’s fame was in some part of Montaigne’s creating. It would seem as if Montaigne were speaking of some great public character. But of whom? Henri, duc de Guise, has been suggested; but that is absurd. A brutal assassination is not une fin pompeuse; and neither honour nor honours followed the duke after death.
The allusion to the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1587), was added in 1595. Montaigne may have seen her at the French Court, and been all the more touched by her tragedy.
Scilicet ultima semper
Expectanda dies homini est, dicique beatus
Ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet.[1]
CHILDREN know the story of King Crœsus which regards this point: that, having been made prisoner by Cyrus and condemned to death, he exclaimed at the moment of his execution, “O Solon! Solon!” This being reported to Cyrus, and he having asked what it meant, Crœsus informed him that he was then, at his cost, verifying the warning which Solon had given him in other days, that men, however much Fortune may seem to smile on them [whatever riches and kingdoms and empires they may have on their hands],[2] cannot be called fortunate until we have seen how the last day of their lives went by, because of the uncertainty and variableness of mortal things, which, at a very slight stirring, change from one condition to another wholly different.[3] And therefore Agesilaus, to some one who called the King of Persia fortunate because he had come so young to such a powerful estate, replied: “Yes, forsooth, but Priam at the same age was not unfortunate.”[4] Sometimes, of kings of Macedonia, successors of the great Alexander, Fortune makes joiners and clerks at Rome;[5] of tyrants of Sicily, schoolmasters at
- ↑ For always the last day of a man must be awaited; and no man should be called blessed before his death and the last rites of his funeral. — Ovid, Metamorphoses, III, 135.
- ↑ Passage in square brackets omitted in 1595.
- ↑ See Herodotus, I, 86. Montaigne had already referred to this saying of Solon in chapter 3 of this Book.
- ↑ See Plutarch, Apothegms of the Lacedæmonians.
- ↑ An allusion to Philip, son of Perseus. See Plutarch, Life of Paulus Æmilius.
