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Stylistic Significance
These comparisons of military anecdotes seem to indicate that
Montaigne, when relying on anecdotes from history, felt no compulsion
to change them very much as to content (though he felt free to embellish
them), but he did a considerable amount of stylistic alteration,
generally for the better. He probably felt that these anecdotes improved
his essays by emphasizing or illustrating various facets of his
discussions. As far as the reader is concerned, anecdotes do increase
the depth of understanding of the discussion, and they also increase
interest by adding a variety of human (historical and personal) experiences
to the essays. Some anecdotes are copied nearly verbatim from
the original, others are translated with the same result. Most of
Montaigne's anecdotes in connection with military history are summarizations
of his readings. Montaigne often synthesizes examples from
various parts of the text with little concern for a word-for-word
correspondence. His interest was not in translating but in getting
across his own ideas—not those of his sources.
In a military anecdote taken from A. Marcellinus, who says
that Julian's Spartan living habits made people wonder if he were not
resuming the philosopher's cloak, Montaigne prefers to see Julian as
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living a soldier's life.
If it appears that Montaigne generally reduces
the anecdote into something more succinct in every instance, the
graphic example hereafter shows that he could measurably improve on
68. Ammianus Marcellinus, p. 505.