Page:Montaigne - Complete Works, Cotton, Hazlitt, 1842.djvu/190

 92 MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYS. and not truly our own: 'tis the quality of a porter, and no effect of valour, to have stronger arms and legs; tis a dead and spiritless quality to draw up well; 'tis a stroke of fortune to make our enemy stumble, or to dazzle him with the light of the sun; 'tis a trick of science and art, which may happen in any cowardly blockhead, to be a good fencer. The estimation and value of a man consist in the heart and in the will: there his true honour lives. Valour is stability, not of legs and arms, but of the courage and the soul; it does not lie in the goodness of our horse, or of our arms, but in ourselves, lie that falls, firm in his courage, - Si succiderit, de genu pugnat; "If his legs fail him, fights upon his knees;" he who, despite the danger of death near at hand, abates nothing of his assurance; who, dying, does yet dart at his enemy a fierce and disdainful look, is overcome, not by us, but by fortune: he is killed, not conquered; the most valiant are, sometimes the most unfortunate. There are some defeats more triumphant than victories. Those four sister-victories, the fairest the sun ever beheld, of Salamis, Platea, Mycale, and Sicily, never opposed all their united glories to the single, glory of the discomfiture of King Leonidas and his heroes at the Pass of Thermopylae. Who ever ran with a more glorious desire and greater ambition to the winning, than the Captain Ischolas to the certain loss of a battle? Who ever set about with more ingenuity and eagerness to secure his safety than he did to assure his ruin? He was ordered to defend a certain pass of Peloponnesus against the Arcadians, which, from the nature of the place and the inequality of forces, finding it utterly impossible tor him to do, and seeing clearly that all who presented themselves to the enemy must certainly be left upon the place; and, on the other hand, reputing it unworthy of his own virtue and magnanimity, and of the Lacedaemonian name, to fail in his duty, he chose a mean betwixt these two extremes, after this manner: the youngest and most active of his men he preserved for the service and defence of their country, and therefore sent them back; and with the rest, whose loss would be of less consideration, he resolved to make good the pass, and, with the death of them, to make the enemy buy their entry as dear as possibly he could. And so it fell out ; for, being presently encompassed on all sides by the Arcadians, after having made a great slaughter of the enemy, he and his men were all cut in pieces.3 Is there any trophy dedicated to conquerors which is not much more due to those who were thus overcome? The part that true conquering has to play lies in the encounter, not in the coming off; the honour of valour consists in fighting, not in subduing. But to return to my story. These prisoners are so far from discovering the least weakness for all the terrors can be represented to them, that, on the contrary, during the two or three months that they are kept, they always appear with a cheerful countenance ; importune their masters to make haste to bring them to the test; defy, rail at them, and reproach them with cowardice, and the number of battles they have lost against those of their country. I have a song made by one of these prisoners, wherein he bids them come all and dine upon him, and welcome, for they shall withal eat their own fathers and grandfathers, whose flesh has served to feed and nourish him. "These muscles," says he, "this flesh, and these veins, are your own. Poor fools that you are, you little think that the substance of your ancestors limbs is here  yet: taste it well, and you will find in it the relish of your own flesh." In which song there is to be observed an invention that smacks nothing of the barbarian. Those that paint these people dying after this manner, represent the prisoner spitting in the face of his executioners, and making at them a wry mouth. And 'tis most certain that, to the very last gasp, they never cease to brave and defy them both in word and gesture. In plain truth, these men are very savage in comparison of us, for, of necessity, they must either be absolutely so, or else we are savages; for there is a vast difference betwixt their manners and ours. The men there have several wives, and so much the greater number by how much they have the greater reputation tor valour, and it is one very remarkable virtue their women have, that the same endeavours our wives jealously use to hinder and divert us from the friendship and familiarity of other women, these employ to acquire it for their husbands ; being, above all things, solicitous of their husbands honour, 'tis their chiefest care to procure for him the most companions in his affections they can, forasmuch as it is a testimony of their husbands valour. Ours will cry out that tis monstrous : it is not so; 'tis a truly matrimonial virtue, though of the highest form. In the Bible, Sarah, Leah, and Rachel, and the wives of Jacob, gave the most beautiful of their handmaids to their husbands; Livia promoted the appetites of Augustus to her own prejudice ; and Stratonice, the wife of King Dejotarus, not only gave up a fair young maid that served her, to her husband s embraces, but,

1 Seneca, de Provid., c. 2. The text has etiam si cederit. 2 Seneca, De Const. Sap. c. 6. 3 Diodorus Sic., xv. 7; where the action of Ischolas is compared to that of King Leonidas, which Montaigne extols above the most celebrated victories.