Page:Essays Vol 1 (Ives, 1925).pdf/302
aN ad
282 ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE
knowledge — which may fall to a dastardly and worthless person — to be skilled in fencing. A man’s estimation and value depend upon his heart and his.will; that is where his true honour lies; valour is strength, not of arms and legs, but of the mind and the soul; it does not depend upon the worth of our horse or of our armour, but upon our own. He who falls persistent in his will, (c) si succederit de genu pugnat.. (a) He who abates no whit of his firmness and confidence for any danger from death not far away; he who, while yielding up his soul, still gazes at his foe with an un- shrinking and disdainful eye — he is beaten, not by us, but by fortune; he is killed, not conquered.* (4) The most val- iant are sometimes the most unfortunate. (c) So too there are defeats no less triumphant than victories. Nor did those four sister victories, the most splendid that the eyes of the sun can ever have seen,— of Salamis, Platzea, Mycale, and Sicily, — ever venture to compare all their combined glory to the glory of the defeat of King Leonidas and his men at the pass of Thermopyle. Who ever rushed with a more praiseworthy and more am- bitious longing to the winning of a battle than did Captain Ischolas to the loss of one? *? Who ever more skilfully and carefully assured himself of safety than he of his destruc- tion? He was appointed to defend a certain pass in the Peloponnesus against the Arcadians; finding himself wholly unable to do this because of the nature of the place and the inequality of the forces, and making up his mind that all who should meet the enemy would by necessity remain on the field; on the other hand, deeming it unworthy, both of his own valour and nobleness of spirit and of the Lace- dzmonian name, to fail in his commission, he took a middle course between those two extremes, in this way: the young- est and most active of his force he preserved for the protec- tion and service of their country, and sent them back to
1 If he fall, he fights kneeling. — Seneca, De Providentia, II. The modern text has occiderit.
2 Cf. Idem, De Constantia, V1. Text of 1580-1588: i/ est vaincu par effect, et non pas par raison; c'est son malheur qu'on peut accuser, non 5a laschete.
- See Diodorus Siculus, XV, 16.