Montaigne - “Of Sorrow”
Montaigne opens “Of Sorrow”, “No man living is more free from this passion than I, who yet neither like it in myself nor admire it in others.” This avowal represents Montaigne as a stoic individual who neither advocates nor loathes sorrow/passion.
Psammenitus - “Of Sorrow”
He is an Egyptian King whom Cambyses (The Persian Kin) confines and subjects to paramount sorrow and mortification.
Lorenzo - “Of Constancy”
Lorenzo typifies the delimitations of constancy. Montaigne writes, “And, in like manner, some years before, Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino, and father to the queen-mother—[Catherine de’ Medici, mother of Henry III.]—laying siege to Mondolfo, a place in the territories of the Vicariat in Italy, seeing the cannoneer give fire to a piece that pointed directly against him, it was well for him that he ducked, for otherwise the shot, that only razed the top of his head, had doubtless hit him full in the breast.” Lorenzo’s ducking is contributory is construction Montaigne’s thesis on the subjectivity of constancy. Had Lorenzo championed arbitrary constancy in terms of his posture, he would have spontaneously been shot.
