Michel de

Montaigne
On the Cannibals
Translated by
Ian Johnston
Vancouver Island University
Nanaimo, British Columbia
2017

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TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

The following text is a

translation of Chapter 31 in
Book 1 of Montaigne’s
Essays. The text of
Montaigne’s Essays was
constantly revised during his
life so that there are
significant differences
between the editions
published in 1580, in 1588,
and in 1595 (a posthumous
edition). On the assumption
that the final version best
represents Montaigne’s final
decisions about the essay, I
have based this translation
upon the 1595 edition,
available at the following
website:
http://www.bribes.org/trismegiste/montable.htm.

Unlike some other

translators, I have made no
attempt here to indicate the
editorial history of various
changes, insertions, and
deletions in the text of “On
Cannibals.” If you want to
track the changes in the
various editions, the
following link should be
helpful:

http://artflx.uchicago.edu/cgi-
bin/philologic/getobject.pl?
c.0:2:31.montaigne

Montaigne, so far as I can

tell, does not have
paragraph breaks (the only
breaks are those provided
by quotations), so I (along
with other translators) have
inserted my own where they
seemed appropriate.

In this English text all

endnotes have been
provided by the translator.
Montaigne’s frequent
quotations in Latin have
been translated into English
in the text and his original
words have been moved
into an endnote (I have
retained Montaigne’s
spelling in the Latin
quotations). The
translations have been made
by the translator. Montaigne
does not indicate the source
of the quotations, but I
have supplied these in the
endnotes.
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MICHEL DE
MONTAIGNE
ON THE CANNIBALS

When king Pyrrhus moved

across into Italy and was
scouting out the
organization of the army
which the Romans sent out
against him, he observed, “I
do not know what sort of
barbarians these are” (for
the Greeks used to call all
foreign nations by that
name) “but the formation
of this army I am looking at
has nothing barbarous
about it.” The Greeks said
much the same about the
army Flaminius marched
through their country, and
so did Philip, when he
looked down from a hillock
on the order and layout of
the Roman camp built in his
kingdom under the
command of Publius
Sulpicius Galba.(1) There we
see how we must be careful
about clinging to common
opinions and must judge
them, not by popular report,
but with the eye of reason.

For a long time I had with

me a man who had lived ten
or twelve years in that other
world which was discovered
in our century, in the place
where Villegaignon landed,
which he called Antarctic
France.(2) This discovery of
such an enormous country
seems to merit serious
consideration. I do not
know if I can affirm that
another similar discovery
will not occur in the future,
given that so many people
more important than us
have been wrong about this
one. I fear that our eyes are
larger than our stomachs,
that we have more curiosity
than comprehension. We
embrace everything, yet we
catch nothing but wind.

Plato introduces Solon

telling a story he had
learned from the priests in
the city of Saïs in Egypt.
They said that long ago,
before the Deluge, there
was a huge island called
Atlantis, right at the mouth
of the Straits of Gibraltar,
which had more land than
all of Africa and Asia
combined and that the kings
of this country, who not
only possessed this island
but also had extended their
control so far into the
continent that they held
lands across the width of
Africa as far as Egypt and
across Europe as far as
Tuscany, were beginning to
march over into Asia and
subjugate all the nations
bordering the
Mediterranean up to the
Black Sea, and to achieve
this had moved across
Spain, Gaul, and Italy, to
Greece, where the
Athenians stopped them.
However, sometime later
both the Athenians and
these people, along with
their island, were swallowed
by the Flood(3).

It is very probable that this

extreme inundation of water
brought about strange
alterations in the places
where the earth was
inhabited, the ones in
which, so people say, the sea
separated Sicily from Italy—

They claim these

places once were
ripped apart
by an enormously
destructive force,
where earlier both
lands had been united
—(4)

It also split Cyprus from

Syria, the island of Euboea
from the mainland of
Boeotia, and in other places
joined lands which had been
separated, filling the
trenches between them with
sand and mud.

. . . long a sterile
marsh on which men
rowed
now nourishes the
neighbouring towns
and feels
the ploughshares’
heavy weight.(5)

But it does not seem very

likely that this new world we
have just discovered was this
island of Atlantis, for it
almost touched Spain, and
the effect of that inundation
would have been incredible
if it had pushed the island
back to where the new
world is, a distance of more
than twelve hundred
leagues. Besides modern
navigators have already
made it almost certain that
the new world is not an
island but a mainland,
connected on one side with
the East Indies and on the
other with the lands under
the two poles. Or else, if it
is divided off from them,
what separates it a narrow
strait, a distance that does
not entitle it to be called an
island.

In these large bodies, as in

our own, it appears that
there are movements, some
natural and others feverish.
When I consider the way in
which our river, the
Dordogne, in our own times
has eroded the right bank of
its descending flow and that
in twenty years it has gained
so much and washed away
the foundations of several
buildings, I clearly see that
this disturbance is
extraordinary. For if it had
always worked in this way or
were to do so in future, the
face of the earth would be
utterly transformed. But
rivers undergo changes:
sometimes they overflow
one bank, sometimes the
other, and sometimes they
flow between them. I am
not speaking about sudden
floods, whose causes we
understand. In Medoc,
along the seashore, my
brother, the Sieur d’Arsac,
watches one of his estates
being buried under sand
that the sea vomits up in
front of it. The tops of
some buildings are still
visible. His rental properties
and his fields have been
changed into very poor
pasture. The inhabitants
state that for some years the
sea has been pushing
towards them so strongly
that they have lost four
leagues of ground. These
sands are her harbinger: we
see huge mounds of
moving sand marching half
a league in front of her and
overpowering the land.

The other testimony from

ancient times to which one
could link this discovery of
a new world is in Aristotle,
at least if that little booklet
On Unheard-of Marvels is by
him. In that work, he tells
the story of certain
Carthaginians who, after
sailing for a long time
beyond the Straits of
Gibraltar and crossing the
Atlantic Ocean, finally
discovered a large fertile
island, all covered with trees
and watered by wide, deep
rivers, a very long way from
any mainland. Attracted by
the goodness and fertility of
the soil, they—and others
after them—went with their
wives and children and
started a settlement.
However, the rulers of
Carthage, noticing that their
country was gradually losing
its people, expressly
prohibited any more from
going there, on pain of
death, and they drove these
new inhabitants out, fearing,
so the story goes, that with
the passage of time they
might multiply to such an
extent that they would
supplant the Carthaginians
themselves and ruin their
state. But Aristotle’s story
does not accord with our
new lands any more than
Plato’s does.

The man I had with me was

a plain, rough fellow, the
sort likely to provide a true
account. For intelligent
people notice more things
and are much more curious,
but they provide their own
gloss on them, and to
strengthen their
interpretation and make it
persuasive, they cannot help
changing their story a little.
They never give you a pure
picture of things, but bend
and disguise them according
to the view they have of
them, and to lend credit to
their judgment and attract
you to it, they willingly add
to the material, stretching it
out and amplifying it. We
need either a very honest
man or else one so simple
that he lacks what it takes to
build up inventive
falsehoods and make them
plausible, a man who is not
wedded to anything. My
man was like that, and, in
addition, at various times he
brought some sailors and
merchants whom he had
known on that voyage to see
me. Thus, I am happy about
his information, without
enquiring into what the
cosmographers may say
about the matter.

We need topographers who

provide us a detailed
account of the places they
have been. But because they
have seen Palestine and have
that advantage over us, they
wish to enjoy the privilege
of telling us news about
every inhabitant in the
world. I would like everyone
to write about what he
knows but only as much as
he knows, not only on this
subject but on all others.
For a person can have some
specific knowledge of or
experience with the nature
of a river or a fountain and
in other things know only
what everyone else does. Yet
to publicize his small scrap
of knowledge, he will
undertake to write about all
of physics. From this vice
stem several serious
difficulties.

Now, to return to my
subject, I find, from what I
have been told about these
people, that there is nothing
barbarous and savage about
them, except that everyone
calls things which he does
not practise himself
barbaric. For, in fact, we
have no test of truth and of
reason other than examples
and ideas of the opinions
and customs in the country
where we live. There we
always have the perfect
religion, the perfect political
arrangements, the perfect
and most accomplished way
of dealing with everything.
Those natives are savages in
the same way we call “wild”
the fruits which nature
produces on her own by her
usual processes; whereas,
the ones we should really
call “wild” instead are those
we have altered artificially
and whose ordinary
behaviour we have
modified. The former
contain vital and vigorous
virtues and properties, the
most genuinely beneficial
and natural qualities which
we have bastardized in the
latter, by adapting them to
gratify our corrupt taste.
Nonetheless the flavour and
delicacy in various
uncultivated fruits from
those countries over there
are excellent even to our
taste—they even rival the
fruit we produce. It is
unreasonable that art should
win the place of honour
over our great and powerful
mother nature. We have
overburdened the beauty
and richness of her works
with our inventions to such
an extent that we have
suffocated everything. Yet
wherever she shines out in
her own purity, her marvels
put our vain and frivolous
enterprises to shame.

Ivy springs up better

on its own
In lonely caves
arbutus grows more
fair
And birds not taught
to sing have sweeter
songs.(6)

All our efforts cannot

succeed in recreating the
nest of even the smallest
bird—its texture, its beauty
and convenience, let alone
the web of the puny spider.
All things, Plato states, are
produced either by nature or
by chance or by art: the
greatest and most beautiful
by one or other of the first
two, the least and most
imperfect by the last.

These nations therefore

seem to me to be barbarous
in the sense that they have
received very little moulding
from the human mind and
are still very close to their
original natural condition.
Natural laws still govern
them, hardly corrupted at all
by our own. They live in
such purity that sometimes I
regret that we did not learn
about them earlier, at a time
when there were men more
capable of judging them
than we are. I am sad that
Lycurgus and Plato did not
know them. For it seems to
me that what our experience
enables us to see in those
nations there surpasses not
only all the pictures with
which poetry has
embellished the Golden
Age, as well as all its
inventiveness in portraying a
happy human condition, but
also the conceptions and
even the desires of
philosophers. They have
scarcely imagined such a
pure and simple innocence
as the one our experience
reveals to us, and they could
hardly have believed that
our society could survive
with so little artifice and
social bonding among
people. It is a nation, I
would tell Plato, in which
there is no form of
commerce, no knowledge
of letters, no science of
numbers, no name for
magistrate or political
superiors, no customs of
servitude, or riches, or
poverty, no contracts, no
inheritance, no division of
property, no occupations,
other than leisure ones, no
respect for kin relationships,
except for common ties, no
clothing, no agriculture, no
metal, no use of wine or
wheat. The very words
which signify lying, treason,
dissimulation, avarice, envy,
slander, and forgiveness are
unknown. How distant from
this perfection would Plato
find the republic he
imagined—“men freshly
come from the gods.”

These are the habits

nature first ordained.
(7)

As for the rest, they live in a

very pleasant and temperate
country, so that, according
to what my witnesses have
told me, it is rare to see a
sick person there, and I have
been assured that in that
land one does not notice
any of the inhabitants
doddering, with rheumy
eyes, toothless, or bowed
down with old age. They
have settled along the sea
coast, closed off on the
landward side by large, high
mountains, with a stretch of
land about one hundred
leagues wide in between.
They have a great
abundance of fish and meat
that has no resemblances to
ours and that they simply
cook and eat, without any
other preparation. The first
man who rode a horse there,
although he had had
dealings with them on
several other voyages, so
horrified them by his riding
posture, that they killed him
with arrows before they
could recognize him.

Their buildings are very

long, capable of holding
two or three hundred souls,
and covered with the bark
of large trees. The strips of
bark are held in the earth at
one end and support and
lean against one another at
the top, in the style of some
of our barns, in which the
roof comes down to the
ground and acts as a wall.
They have a wood so hard
that they cut with it and use
it to make swords and grills
to cook their meat. Their
beds are woven cotton,
suspended from the roof,
like those of our sailors.
Each person has his own,
for the wives sleep separate
from the husbands. They
rise with the sun and, as
soon as they get up, eat to
last them all day, for that is
the only meal they have. At
that time they do not drink,
like certain other Eastern
peoples Suidas observed
who drank only apart from
meals. They drink several
times a day and a
considerable amount. The
beverage is made from some
root and is the colour of
our claret wines. They drink
it only lukewarm. It will not
keep for more than two or
three days. It has a slightly
spicy taste, does not go to
one’s head, is good for the
stomach, and works as a
laxative for those not
accustomed to it. It is a very
pleasant drink for those
who are used to it. Instead
of bread they use a certain
white material, like
preserved coriander. I have
tried it—the taste is sweet
and somewhat flat.

They spend the entire day

dancing. Younger men go
off to hunt wild animals
with bows. Meanwhile,
some of the women keep
busy warming their drinks,
which is their main
responsibility. In the
morning, before they begin
their meal, one of the old
men preaches to everyone in
the entire barn, walking
from one end to the other
and repeating the same
sentence several times until
he has completed his tour
of the building, which is
easily one hundred paces
long. He recommends only
two things to them: courage
against their enemies and
affection for their wives.
And these old men never
fail to mention this
obligation, adding as a
refrain that their wives are
the ones who keep their
drinks warm and seasoned
for them.

In several places, including

my own home, there are
examples of their beds, their
ropes, their swords, their
wooden bracelets, which
they use to cover their wrists
in combat, and their large
canes hollow at one end,
with whose sound they keep
time in their dances. They
are close shaven all over,
and remove the hair much
more cleanly than we do,
using only wood or stone as
a razor. They believe that
the soul is immortal and
that those who have
deserved well of the gods
are lodged in that part of
the sky where the sun rises
and the damned in regions
to the west.

They have some sort of

priests or prophets who
rarely appear in front of the
people, for they live in the
mountains. When they do
arrive, there is a grand
celebration and a solemn
assembly of several villages
(each barn of the sort I
have described makes one
village, and the villages are
about one French league
from each other). This
prophet speaks to them in
public, exhorting them to be
virtuous and to do their
duty. But their entire ethical
knowledge contains only
these two articles: courage
in war and affection for
their wives. He prophesies
what is to come and what
they can expect from their
enterprises; he urges them
to war or turns them away
from it. But there is a
condition: if he fails to
prophesy well, if things turn
out different from what his
predictions have told them,
he is cut into a thousand
pieces, if they catch him,
and condemned as a false
prophet. For this reason, the
prophet who is wrong once
is not seen again.

Divination is a gift of God.

For that reason abusing it
should be punished as fraud.
Among the Scythians, when
the divines failed with their
predictions, they were
chained by their hands and
feet, laid out on carts full of
kindling and pulled by oxen,
and burned there. Those
who deal with matters in
which the outcome depends
on what human beings are
capable of can be excused if
they only do their best. But
surely the others, those who
come to us with deluding
assurances of an
extraordinary faculty beyond
our understanding, should
be punished for not keeping
their promises and for the
recklessness of their deceit.

These natives have wars

with the nations which live
on the other side of their
mountains, further inland.
They go out against them
completely naked with no
weapons except bows or
wooden swords with a point
at one end, like the tips of
our spears. What is
astonishing is their
resolution in combat, which
never ends except in
slaughter and bloodshed, for
they have no idea of terror
or flight. Each man brings
back as a trophy the head of
the enemy he has killed and
attaches it to the entry of his
dwelling. After treating their
prisoners well for quite a
long time and giving them
every consideration they can
possibly think of, each man
who has a prisoner
summons a grand meeting
of his acquaintances. He ties
a rope to one of the
prisoner’s arms and holds
him there, gripping the
other end, some paces away
for fear the prisoner might
hurt him, and he gives his
dearest friend the prisoner’s
other arm to hold in the
same way. Then the two of
them, in the presence of the
entire assembly, stab him to
death with their swords.
After that, they roast him,
they all eat him together,
and they send portions to
their absent friends. They
do this not, as people think,
to nourish themselves, the
way the Scythians did in
ancient times, but as an act
manifesting extreme
vengeance. We see evidence
for this from the following:
having noticed that the
Portuguese, who were allied
with their enemies, used a
different method of killing
them when they took them
prisoner—this was to bury
them up to the waist, shoot
the rest of the body full of
arrows, and then hang them
—they thought that this
people who had come from
another world (who had
already spread the
knowledge of so many
vicious practices throughout
the neighbouring region and
were much greater masters
of all sorts of evil than they
were) did not select this sort
of vengeance for no reason
and that therefore this
method must be harsher
than their own. And so they
began to abandon their old
practice and to follow this
new one.

I am not so much
concerned about the fact
that we call attention to the
barbaric horror of this
action as I am about the fact
that, in judging their faults
correctly, we should be so
blind to our own. I believe
that there is more savagery
in eating a man when he is
alive than eating him when
he is dead, more in tearing
apart by tortures and the
rack a body full of feeling,
roasting it piece by piece,
having it mauled and eaten
by dogs and pigs—
treatments which I have not
only read about but seen
done a short time ago, not
among ancient enemies but
among neighbours and
fellow citizens, and, what is
worse, under the pretext of
piety and religion—than
there is in cooking and
eating a man once he is
dead.

Chrysippus and Zeno,

leaders of the Stoic school,
thought that there was
nothing wrong in using our
carcasses for any purpose
whatsoever, in case of need,
and in using them as a
source of food, just as our
ancestors did when they
were being besieged by
Julius Caesar in the town of
Alesia and resolved to stave
off the hunger of this siege
with the bodies of old men,
women, and other people
useless in combat.(8)

They say the Gascons

with such foods as
these
Prolonged their lives.
(9)

And doctors are not afraid

of using a dead body, either
internally or externally, for
all sorts of purposes in
order to preserve our health.
But no one has ever come
across a point of view so
unreasonable that it excuses
treason, disloyalty, tyranny,
and cruelty, which are
common faults of ours.

Thus, we can indeed call

these natives barbarians, as
far as the laws of reason are
concerned, but not in
comparison with ourselves,
who surpass them in every
variety of savagery. Their
warfare is entirely noble and
generous—as excusable and
beautiful as this human
malady can possibly be.
With them it is based only
on one thing, a rivalry in
courage. They do not argue
about conquering new lands,
for they still enjoy that
natural fecundity which
furnishes them without toil
and trouble everything
necessary and in such
abundance that they have no
need to expand their
borders. They are still at that
fortunate stage where they
do not desire anything more
than their natural demands
prescribe. Everything over
and above that is for them
superfluous.

Those among them of the

same age generally call each
other brothers, and those
who are younger they call
children. The old men are
fathers to all the others.
These leave the full
possession of their goods
undivided to their heirs in
common, without any other
title, except the simple one
which nature gives to all her
creatures by bringing them
into the world. If their
neighbours cross the
mountains and come to
attack them and if they are
victorious over them, what
the victors acquire is glory
and the advantage of having
proved themselves more
courageous and valiant, for
they have no further interest
in the possessions of the
conquered. Then they
return to their own country,
where they have no lack of
anything they need, just as
they do not lack that great
benefit of knowing how to
enjoy their condition in
happiness and how to
remain content with it. And
the natives we are talking
about do the same. They
demand no ransom of their
prisoners, other than a
confession and a
recognition that they have
been beaten. But in an
entire century there has not
been one prisoner who did
not prefer to die rather than
to surrender, either by his
expression or by his words,
a single bit of the grandeur
of his invincible courage.
Not one of them has been
observed who did not prefer
to be killed and eaten than
merely to ask that he be
spared. They treat the
captives very freely so that
their lives will be all the
more dear to them,
commonly making
conversational threats about
their coming death and the
torments they will have to
suffer, mentioning the
preparations which are
being made for this event,
the limbs which will be
sliced off, and the
celebrations which will be
held at their expense. They
do all this with one purpose
in mind, to drag from their
prisoner’s mouth some weak
or demeaning words or to
make them keen to flee, in
order to gain the advantage
of scaring them and thus
triumphing over their
resolution. For, in fact,
everything considered, that
is the only point which
makes a victory genuine.

There is no victory
 except one which
conquers enemies
who in their minds
confess it.(10)

Long ago the Hungarians,

who were very bellicose
warriors, did not push their
advantage any further once
they had made the enemy
ask for mercy. For having
wrung this confession of his
defeat from him, they let
him go unharmed and
without ransom, except, at
most, for exacting his
promise that he would not
take up arms against them
from that point on.

We have a number of
advantages over our
enemies which are
borrowed advantages and
not our own. To have
sturdier arms and legs is the
quality of a porter, not of
virtue. Physical agility is a
dead, physical skill. It is a
stroke of luck which makes
our enemy stumble and
blinds his eyes with light
from the sun. It is a trick of
art and technique that one
may find in a worthless
coward that makes a
competent fencer. The
courage and value of a man
lie in his heart and in his
will: there one finds his true
honour. Valour is strength,
not of legs and arms, but of
courage and spirit. It does
not consist of the value of
our horse or our weapons,
but of ourselves: the man
who falls still courageous
and resolute, who “if his
legs fail fights on his
knees,”(11) who, whatever
the danger of imminent
death, does not relax his
assertiveness and who still,
as he surrenders his soul,
looks at his enemy with a
firm and scornful eye—he is
beaten, not by us but by
fortune. He has been killed
but not conquered. The
most valiant are sometimes
the most unfortunate.

Thus, there are defeats

which are triumphs, the
equal of victories. Even
those four sister victories,
the most beautiful the eye
of the sun has ever gazed
upon—Salamis, Plataea,
Mycale, and Sicily—would
never dare to set all their
combined glories up against
the glorious defeat of king
Leonidas and his men at the
pass of Thermopylae. Who
ever charged with a more
glorious and more
ambitious desire to win a
battle than captain Ischolas
did to lose one? Who has
been more ingenious and
more careful in ensuring his
safety than he was in
ensuring his own
destruction. He was charged
with defending a certain
pass in the Peloponnese
against the Arcadians.
Judging that this was
completely impossible, given
the nature of the place and
the disparity in the number
of troops, he decided that
all those who confronted
the enemy would have to die
there. On the other hand, he
thought it unworthy of his
own virtue and magnanimity
and of the Lacedaemonian
name not to fail in his
responsibilities. So between
these two extremes he chose
a middle course, as follows:
he saved the youngest and
most energetic of his force
for the defence and service
of their county, by sending
them back, and with those
whose loss was less
significant he determined to
hold the pass and by their
deaths to do as much as he
possibly could to make his
enemies pay the highest
price for their entry through
it. And that is what
happened. For they were
surrounded on all sides by
the Arcadians, and, after
slaughtering a great many of
them, he and his men were
all put to the sword. Is there
any trophy dedicated to the
victors which would not be
more deservingly given to
the conquered? A genuine
victory emerges from battle,
not from survival, and the
honour of valour lies in
fighting, not in conquering.

To return to our story.

These prisoners are so far
from surrendering, in spite
of everything which is done
to them that, by contrast,
during the two or three
months they are held, they
look cheerful and urge their
masters to hurry up and put
them to the test. They defy
and insult them. They
reproach them with
cowardice and the number
of battles they have lost
fighting against them. I have
a song composed by one
prisoner which contains a
taunting invitation for them
all to step up boldly and
gather to dine on him,
because they will at the
same time be eating their
fathers and grandfathers
who have served to feed and
nourish his body. “These
muscles,” he says, “this
flesh, these veins—these are
your own, poor fools that
you are. You do not
recognize that the substance
of your ancestors’ limbs is
still contained in them.
Savour them well. You will
find in them the taste of
your own flesh”—an
ingenious idea without the
slightest flavour of
barbarity. Those who
describe these people as
they die and depict what is
going on when they are
struck down show the
prisoner spitting in the faces
of his executioners and
curling his lip at them in
contempt. In fact, they do
not stop challenging and
defying their killers with
words and gestures right up
to their final breath. Truly
we have here really savage
men in comparison to us.
For beyond all doubt that is
what they must be—either
that or we must be. For
there is an amazing distance
between their ways and
ours.

The men there have several

wives and the greater the
number, the higher their
reputation for valour. In
their marriages there is
something remarkably
beautiful: the same jealousy
our wives possess, which
deprives us of the
friendship and kindness of
other women, their wives
possess in a completely
similar way to obtain these
things for them. Since they
care more for the honour of
their husbands than for
anything else, they go to
great lengths to seek out
and have as many
companions as they can,
inasmuch as that is a
testimony of their husband’s
merit.

Our wives will cry out that

this is a miracle. It is not. It
is a proper marital virtue,
but of the highest order. In
the Bible, Leah, Rachel,
Sarah, and Jacob’s wives
gave their beautiful servants
to their husbands. And Livia
supported the appetites of
Augustus, rather than her
own interest. And
Stratonice, wife of King
Deiotarus not only provided
her husband a very beautiful
young maidservant in her
service for her husband’s
use, but also carefully
brought up her children and
supported them as
successors to their father’s
estates.

And so that people do not

think that they do all this
out of a simple and servile
duty to habit and under
pressure from the authority
of their ancient customs,
without reflection or
judgement, and because
they have such stupid souls
that they cannot choose any
other way, I must cite some
aspects of their capabilities.
In addition to what I have
recited from one of their
war songs, I have another—
a love song which begins
like this: “Stay, adder, stay,
so that my sister may draw
from your painted pattern a
design for making a rich
ribbon which I may offer
my beloved—in this way
your beauty and your
markings will be honoured
above all other serpents
evermore.”
This first couplet is the
refrain of the song. Now, I
have had suffienct dealings
with poetry to judge not
only that is there nothing
barbarous in this
imaginative piece, but also
that it is perfectly
Anacreontic.(12) In addition,
their language is soft and
has an agreeable sound, with
something like Greek
endings.
Three of these natives,
unaware how much it would
one day cost their peace and
happiness to learn about our
corruptions and not
realizing that the interaction
would lead to their ruin—
since I assume that that is
already underway—to their
great misfortune let
themselves be led astray by
their desire for novelty and
left the gentleness of their
heavens in order to come
and see ours. They were in
Rouen at the same time as
King Charles IX was there
[in 1562]. The king talked
with them a long time. They
were shown our ways, our
ceremonies, and the layout
of a beautiful city. After
that, someone asked them
their opinion, in order to
learn from them what they
had found most admirable.
They said there were three
things. To my intense
annoyance, I have forgotten
the third, but I can still
remember two of them.
They said that, first of all,
they found it really strange
that so many large men with
beards—strong and armed
—who surrounded the king
(they were probably
referring to the Swiss
guards) would agree to obey
a child rather than choosing
one of themselves to be in
command. Secondly (since
in their way of speaking
they call men halves of one
another) they said they had
noticed that among us some
men were overstuffed with
all sorts of rich
commodities while their
halves were begging at their
doors, emaciated from
hunger and poverty. They
found it strange that these
halves in such desperate
need could put up with such
an injustice and did not
seize the others by the
throat or set fire to their
houses.

I talked to one of them for

a very long time, but I had
an interpreter who followed
what I said so badly and
whose stupidity prevented
him from understanding my
ideas so much that I could
derive nothing worthwhile
from the conversation.
When I asked the man what
what benefit he received
from his superior rank
among his own people (for
he was a captain, and our
sailors used to call him
“King”), he told me that it
was to march into war at the
front. In order to inform me
how many men followed
him, he showed me a certain
space, indicating that the
number was as many men as
could be placed there—
probably four or five
thousand men. When I
asked him if all his authority
came to an end when the
war was over, he replied that
when he visited the villages
dependent on him, he still
had the privilege of having
the forest pathways through
the thickets cleared for him,
so that he could easily walk
along them.

All that is not too bad, but

what of it? They wear no
breeches.

ENDNOTES

(1) Pyrrhus (319 BC-272

BC), king of the Greek
city of Epirus, invaded
Italy in 280 BC,
ostensibly to help the
cities in southern Italy
fight against the Romans.
Titus Quinctius
Flaminius (c. 229 BC – c.
174 BC) was a Roman
general charged with
 fighting against Philip,
king of Macdeon.
Publius Sulpicius Galba
was a Roman general
who fought in the same
wars against Philip. [Back
to Text]

(2) Villegaignon (1510 –

1571) was a French
explorer and soldier who,
in 1555, landed in Brazil
with a small force of
soldiers and colonists.
[Back to Text]

(3) This story is described in

Plato’s dialogue Timaeus.
[Back to Text]

(4) Montaigne quotes the

Latin: “Haec loca, vi
quondam et vasta convulsa
ruina,/ Dissiluisse ferunt,
cum protinus utraque tellus/
Una foret.” (Virgil, Aeneid,
3.414) [Back to Text]

(5) Montaigne quotes the

Latin: “. . . sterilisque diu
palus aptaque remis/
Vicinas urbe alit, et grave
sentit aratrum.” (Horace,
De Arte Poetica, 65) [Back
to Text]

(6) Montaigne quotes the

Latin: “Et veniunt hederae
sponte sua melius,/ Surgit et
in solis formosior arbutus
 antris/ Et volucres nulla
dulcius arte canunt.”
(Propertius, 1.2.10) [Back
to Text]

(7) Montaigne quotes the

Latin: “viri a diis recentes”
(Seneca, Letters 90) and
“Hos natura modos primum
dedit.” (Virgil, Georgics,
2.20) [Back to Text]

(8) The Battle of Alesia, one

of the highlights of
Julius Caesar’s military
career, took place in 52
BC during the Gallic
Wars. [Back to Text]

(9) Montaigne quotes the

Latin: Vascones, fama est,
alimentis talibus usi/
Produxere animas.
(Juvenal, Satires, 15.93)
[Back to Text]

(10) Montaigne quotes

the Latin: “victoria nulla
est/ Quam quae confessos
animo quoque subjugat
hostes.” (Claudius, On the
Sixth Consulship of
Honorius, 248) [Back to
Text]

(11) Montaigne quotes

the Latin: “si succiderit, de
genu pugnat” (Seneca, On
Providence, 2). [Back to
 Text]

(12) Anacreon (c. 590 BC)

was a celebrated lyric
poet in Ancient Greece.
[Back to Text]

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