Michel de Montaigne Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Eric MacPhail

Critical Essay by Eric MacPhail

SOURCE: MacPhail, Eric. “Montaigne and the Praise of Sparta.” Rhetorica 20, no. 2 (spring 2002): 193-211.

In this essay, MacPhail examines Montaigne's writings on Sparta, maintaining that he used the comparison between ancient and modern cultures as a way of defining the values of his own time.

In the Apophthegmata regum et imperatorum, Plutarch recounts the anecdote of the sophist who proposed to give a speech in praise of Hercules. “Who blames him?” asked the Spartan king Antalcidas.¹ This anecdote appealed sufficiently to Plutarch for him to repeat the same saying twice in the Apophthegmata Laconica, where it is attributed first to Antalicidas and then to Brasidas. The premise of this laconic logic is that we only praise what others blame. Praise and blame are two sides to the same story, counter concepts that cannot exist independently of each other. In light of this tradition of the “Herculis encomium” or...
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