ABSTRACT
Early modern French readers learned much about Stoicism from two men, Cicero and Seneca, who died violent deaths, victims of civil war or tyranny. The authors’ fate only made their lessons more relevant. France was ravaged by the Wars of Religion (1562–98): to die in battle, or at the hand of a murderer, perhaps as one of the victims of a massacre, was an entirely conceivable fate. Knocked unconscious by a fall from his horse, Montaigne’s first thought on coming round was that he had been shot in the head (Essais 2.6, 374/419–20). 1 He might well have been: his area was on the front-line of the religious wars. The essay in which he recounts this event is called “De l’exercitation” (“On Practice”), a key theme of Stoic psychological pedagogy (see, for instance, Seneca, Ep. 76.34–5). Montaigne suggests that the experience of a sudden loss of consciousness is worth examining for the insight it may give us into the process of dying (2.6, 372/418). (Seneca himself compares the experience of dying with that of fainting; Ep. 77.9.) Philosophy can seldom have seemed more relevant to daily life. Its connection with politics is likewise clear. Almost every major exponent of Stoicism throughout the period uses political metaphors for psychological conflicts: the passions, for instance, are stigmatized as rebels against the legitimate authority of reason.
