The Essays Of Michel De Montaigne (volume 2)

Synopsis

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1908. Excerpt: ... Romans had public care to the nourishment of geese, by whose vigilance their Capitol had been preserved. The Athenians made a decree that the mules and moyls which had served at the building of the temple called Hecatompedon should be free and suffered to pasture at their own choice, without hindrance.1 The Agrigentines2 had a common use solemnly to inter the beasts they had a kindness for, as horses of some rare quality, dogs, and useful birds, and even those that had only been kept to divert their children; and the magnificence that was ordinary with them in all other things, also particularly appeared in the sumptuosity and numbers of monuments erected to this end, and which remained in their beauty several ages after. The Egyptians3 buried wolves, bears, crocodiles, dogs, and cats in sacred places, embalmed their bodies, and put on mourning at their death. Cimon gave an honourable sepulture to the mares with which he had three times gained the prize of the course at the Olympic Games.1 The ancient Xantippus caused his dog to be interred on an eminence near the sea, which has ever since retained the name,5 and Plutarch says, that he had a scruple about selling for a small profit to the slaughterer an ox that had been long in his service. CHAPTER XII. APOLOGY FOR RAIMOND DE SEBONDE. Learning is, in truth, a very useful and a very considerable quality; such as despise it merely discover their own folly: but yet I do not prize it at the excessive rate some others do ; as Herillus the philosopher for one, who therein places the sovereign good, and maintained that it was merely in her to render us wise and contented,7 which I do not i Plutarch, Life of Cato the Censor, c. 3. ' Diogenes Siculus, xiii . 17. 3 Idem, ibid. * Herodotus, book ii. 5 Plutarch, ut supra. * Idem, ibid. 7 Diog...