Heroic Hierarchies: Classical Models for Panegyrics in Seventeenth-Century France

Author(s): Mark Bannister

Source: International Journal of the Classical Tradition , Summer, 2001, Vol. 8, No. 1
(Summer, 2001), pp. 38-59
Published by: Springer

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 Heroic Hierarchies: Classical
Models for Panegyrics in
Seventeenth-Century France
MARK BANNISTER

In sixteenth-century France, the panegyric, considered to be primarily a didactic exercise,

was essentially linked to rhetoric, and classical references used in it were largely decora-
tive. Several factors, notably the increased national confidence resulting from the reign of
Henri IV, a new view of human nature which stressed the heroic potential in mankind,
and an evolving interpretation of the function of historiography, combined to produce a
new approach towards the panegyric, apparent in the 1630s and 1640s. Comparisons of
major contemporary figures, especially Louis XIII and, during the regency of 1643-1651,
the Prince de Conde, with heroes of the ancient world produced a kind of hierarchy with
Alexander at its head because of his individualistic ambition and self-reliance but with the
modern hero surpassing him and all other ancient heroes. During the personal rule of
Louis XIV, comparisons with the ancients became redundant, not only because of the level
of adulation accorded to Louis but because of a loss of faith in the heroic potential of the
ordinary mortal.

acques Amyot's translation of Plutarch's Lives was greatly admired when it was
published in 1559 and for many years afterwards. Montaigne was to say of it: 'nous
autres ignorans estions perdus, si ce livre ne nous eust relev6 du bourbier; [...] c'est nostre
breviaire' ('We ignorant ones would have been lost if that book had not lifted us from
the mire; [...] it is our breviary').' Its particular significance lies in the fact that, in
making Plutarch's portraits of noble Greeks and Romans available to the French reader,
Amyot helped to strengthen the general awareness of the concept of ancient virtue at a
time when attempts were being made, notably by the Pliade in the literary sphere, to
raise France's self-respect in terms of its own achievements. The admiration for antiq-
uity that was central to the French Renaissance was mingled at the time with the
desire to assert French claims to glory in the same areas of human endeavour as those
in which the ancients had excelled. Amyot's definition of history as 'le tresor de la vie
humaine, qui preserve de la mort d'oubliance les faicts & dicts memorables des hommes, & les
adventures merveilleuses, & cas estranges, que produit la longue suite du temps' ('the trea-
sure-house of human life, which preserves from oblivion men's memorable deeds and
words as well as the wondrous adventures and strange happenings that occur over the

1. M. de Montaigne, Essais, Livre II, ch. IV (CEuvres completes, ed. A. Thibaudet and M. Rat,
Paris: Gallimard-Pldiade, 1962, p. 344).

Mark Bannister, Oxford Brookes University, School of Languages, Gipsy Lane Campus,
Headington, Oxford OX3 OBP, United Kingdom.

International Journal of the Classical Tradition, Vol. 8, No. 1, Summer 2001, pp. 38-59.

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Bannister 39

long span of t
virtue a place
In the light
perhaps surpr
panegyrics a
heroes of th
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tion were to
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uttered. It is
the Younger
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40 International Journal of the Classical Tradition / Summer 2001

prince is publicly set forth, provided it is done cleverly, so that it may

appear to men of intelligence that you were not currying favour but utter-
ing a warning.')4

The panegyric was thus related to the tradition of the speculum principis, the kind of
treatise that set out the virtues and qualities required to make a good king.5
As a result, the function fulfilled by the classical tradition in the art of the panegy-
ric in the sixteenth century was usually very largely decorative. References to the
ancient world were a mixture of mythological, legendary and historical allusions which
served principally to evoke a range of further associations and were used to embroider
the main theme. When Ronsard set out to sing the praises of Henri II in his Hymne of
1555, he expatiated at length on the heroic virtues possessed by the king (clemency,
liberality, magnanimity), his military and political successes and his physical accom-
plishments but there is no attempt to make serious comparisons with the heroes of the
ancient world. Achilles is brought in because he deserves his epithet of 'fleetfoot' (pied-
viste) less than Henri; Castor and Pollux are less skilled in horsemanship and swords-
manship than he; Henri had surpassed his father just as Achilles, Ajax and Agamemnon
had surpassed theirs.6 These are no more than stylistic embellishments. Du Bellay's
eulogies of the same king and other nobles are similar. Mythological references are
brought in to decorate the verse; historical figures such as Caesar, Pyrrhus and Augustus
make brief appearances but the reader is never invited to stop and consider how they
compare realistically with the subject.7

4. P. S. Allen (ed.), Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, 12 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1992; First edition 1906-58), I, 399, 400. English translation from The Collected Works of
Erasmus, Vol. 2: The Correspondence of Erasmus. Letters 142 to 297, 1501 to 1514, translated by
R. A. B. Mynors and D. F. S. Thomson (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press,
1975), pp. 81-82.
5. In France, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as a result of the specific political
forces at work and especially the move towards absolutism, the speculum principis devel-
oped from being largely a collection of adages drawn from the Bible and ancient authors to
a reasoned argument in favour of a particular theory of government, often with a concern to
refute what was supposed to be the doctrine of Machiavelli. The panegyric stood closer to
the older tradition, relying on axioms and adages of which the subject could be shown to be
an illustration. On the speculum principis in general, see M. Philipp and T. Stammen,
'Fiirstenspiegel', in: Gert Ueding (ed.), Historisches Wdrterbuch der Rhetorik, 8 vols. (Tiibingen:
Niemeyer, 1992-), III (1996), cols. 495-507 and in France in particular, see Rene Pillorget,
'L'Image du prince dans la France du XVIIe siecle', in: Konrad Repgen (ed.), Das Herrscherbild
im 17. Jahrhundert, Schriftenreihe der Vereinigung zur Erforschung der Neueren Geschichte
19 (Miinster: Aschendorff, 1991), pp. 43-57.
6. P. de Ronsard, CEuvres complktes, ed. J. C6ard, D. Manager and M. Simonin (Paris: Gallimard-
Pleiade, 1994), II, 461, 464-65. For analyses of how Ronsard's use of mythological references
is linked to his political concerns, see Francis M. Higman, 'Ronsard's political and polemical
poetry', in: Terence Cave (ed.), Ronsard the Poet (London: Methuen, 1973), pp. 241-285, and
Henri Weber, La Creation podtique au XVIe siecle en France (Paris: Nizet, 1955), chap. 8. For an
examination of the status of Ronsard's mythological references as either subtext or topos,
see Thomas Schmitz, Pindar in der franzisischen Renaissance. Studien zu seiner Rezeption in
Philologie, Dichtungstheorie und Dichtung, Hypomnemata: Untersuchungen zur Antike und
ihrem Nachleben 101 (Gbttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), pp. 50-70, 76-107.
7. Cf. Poesies franqaises et latines de Joachim du Bellay, ed. E. Courbet, 2 vols. (Paris: Gamier,
1918), I, 142, 244, 247-48 and passim. Andre Th&vet's Pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres

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Bannister 41

Seventy or ei
The panegyri
still directed
the seat of po
rhetorical ski
As was indica
panegyric of
him to the co
His essential
citizen, one o
are subject to
entered Rome
allow his sta
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are exercises i
to show how
luminaries of
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Undoubtedly
Henri IV and
factor. Here
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grecz, latins et
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French Renaiss
8. P. Matthieu,
mort deplorabl

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42 International Journal of the Classical Tradition / Summer 2001

after the death of Henri, Jacques Hennequin confirms that it was overwhelmingly
Hercules that the orators used to support their praises of the dead king.9
The main factor behind the development of the new style of panegyric, however,
was certainly the emergence of a view of human nature which gave primacy to the
heroic potential in mankind. Although the humanism of the sixteenth century had, by
definition, been founded on an assertion of human values, it had taken a particular
turn in France towards the end of the century with the dominant influence of neo-
stoicism. This had its own peculiarly national characteristics which differentiated it
from the stoicism of Zeno and Seneca. It is not only that it was difficult and possibly
dangerous in a Christian country to preach the doctrine that all virtues had equal
value, that the achievement of a state of ataraxia ("impassiveness") through with-
drawal from the world was the ultimate good and that suicide was a legitimate re-
sponse to the onslaughts of fate. Still less was it possible to argue in accordance with
Epictetus that the possession of reason made man a part of the divinity. It is rather that
the French neo-stoics resisted the idea that following reason necessarily meant sup-
pressing all traces of passion and they recognized that passions such as love and
concern for one's country could be legitimate.'0 None the less, their influence worked
against the notion of the heroic individual in the sense of the person who endeavours
to impose his or her own will onto circumstances and fights, literally or figuratively, to
rise above the rest of humanity. Although neo-stoicism did not go unchallenged in the
sixteenth century, it was only in the seventeenth century that a systematic refutation of
its tenets was to be offered and a radically alternative conception of human nature
presented by moralists. From the 1620s onwards, when Guez de Balzac was reporting
that 'depuis la mort de Juste Lipse et de Monsieur le Garde des Seaux du Vair, il nous est
permis de parler librement de Zenon et de Chrysippe, & de dire que les opinions de ces Ennemis
du Sens commun, estoient quelquefois plus estranges que les plus estranges Fables de la Poesie'
('since the death of Justus Lipsius and of Monsieur du Vair, the Privy Seal, we are
allowed to speak openly about Zeno and Chrysippus and to say that the opinions
expressed by those enemies of common sense were sometimes stranger than the strang-
est fables of fiction'),"1 the moralists of Catholic humanism--Coeffeteau, Senault,
Ceriziers12-were reasserting the legitimacy of the passions and particularly of amour

9. J. Hennequin, Henri IV dans ses oraisons funebres ou la naissance d'une Idgende, Bibliotheque
francaise et romane : S rie C, Etudes litt6raires 62 (Paris: Klincksieck, 1977), pp. 186-94.
10. French neo-stoicism was greatly affected in the second half of the sixteenth century by the
experience of the religious wars which gave a particular emphasis to the perceived relation-
ship between reason and the passions. Du Vair's Traictd de la constance et consolation as
calamitez publiques, for instance, was written during the siege of Paris in 1590 and, given the
need to combat the forces threatening the state, concludes in favour of a much more active
and patriotic response to the onslaughts of fate than would have been advocated by the
ancients. See A. A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy (London: Duckworth, 1974), Ch. 4; Anthony
Levi, French Moralists: the theory of the passions, 1585 to 1649 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964),
especially Ch. 7; Giinter Abel, Stoizismus und friihe Neuzeit: zur Entstehungsgeschichte modernen
Denkens im Felde von Ethik und Politik (Berlin-New York: de Gruyter, 1978), esp. Chs. V-VII.
11. J.-L. Guez de Balzac, 'La Derniere Obiection du Chicaneur, refutee', CEuvres, 2 vols. (Paris,
1665), II, 317.
12. N. Coiffeteau, Tableau des passions humaines, de leurs causes et de leurs effets (Paris, 1620); J.-F.
Senault, De l'vsage des passions (Paris, 1641); R. Ceriziers, Le Philosophe francois, 3 vols. (Paris,
1643).

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 Bannister 43

de soi which c
The desire to a
considered as a
A third factor
the beginning
selves as erudi
behind the re
selves therefor
the same way
scripts in orde
tury, this em
stronger asser
but at the sam
Historians held
lessons.14
The new appr
of the foremos
history that it
ceux qui ont c
great deeds an
Charles Sorel us
manifesto for
from the lege
incongruous, t
wills are borin
the historian s
the reader.16 Fo
que des choses i
('the real subj
which memor
the reputation
'la face interieu
internal aspe
judgement').17

13. See A. Stegm

sous Louis XIII',
d'Henri IV et de
51.

14. See G. Huppert, The Idea of Perfect History: historical erudition and historical philosophy in
Renaissance France (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970) and 0. Ranum, Artisans of
Glory: writers and historical thought in seventeenth-century France (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1980).
15. Quoted in W. H. Evans, L'Historien Mizeray et la conception de l'histoire en France au XVIIe
sikcle (Paris: J. Gamber, 1930), p. 84.
16. C. Sorel, Histoire de la monarchie franqoise (Paris, 1632), Advertissement.
17. P. Fortin de la Hoguette, Testament, ou conseils fideles d'vn bon pere a ses enfans, 2nd edn. (Paris,
1648), pp. 149, 152.

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44 International Journal of the Classical Tradition / Summer 2001

With historical figures being cut out of their context and presented as exempla in
their own right, it was natural that encomiasts should seek to draw parallels between
their noble contemporaries and classical models, and the 1630s and 1640s saw a posi-
tive flowering of the panegyric. Parallels with heroic figures of the ancient world now
took the form of genuine comparisons rather than figurative embellishments. Indeed,
the tendency, increasingly evident in the 1640s, was to inform the subject that he was
greater than the hero with whom he was being compared.
The pattern that emerged is clearly visible in the 1620s in the panegyrics ad-
dressed to Louis XIII. Those that were published at the beginning of the decade extol
his virtue and piety and especially the love of justice that was to earn him the appella-
tion of le Juste, but they can find relatively little to praise in terms of actual achieve-
ments.18 In his comparison of Louis with the Emperor Severus Alexander, Gomberville
is reduced to expressing the hope that, since both men came to the throne at an early
age and share so many qualities, Louis will be able to match the military successes of
the Roman.19 Over the following few years, Louis took part in a number of military
campaigns and built up a reputation as a warrior, the most striking enterprise being
the year-long siege of La Rochelle and its eventual reduction on 29th October 1628. The
nation's imagination was caught by the fact that, in order to carry out an effective
blockade of the town, it was necessary to close off the entrance to the harbour by
building an enormous sea-wall, capable of resisting the Atlantic waves. The operation
took several months and was conceived on a scale that was entirely new in French
military history. When the town capitulated, Louis's clemency towards the rebels and
his claim to have restored national unity through the destruction of Huguenot opposi-
tion ensured that he was accorded almost superhuman status. Innumerable panegyrics
were written, lauding him as a monarch to be set above the heroes of the ancient
world. Parallels were found with generals who had tried to overcome natural ob-
stacles, but in each case Louis was the more successful:

Quod Xerxes, quod Alexander, quod Scipio, quod Augustus, quod Constantinus,
Maximianusque si viverent, non tentarent: tu non tentasti modo, Ludovice, sed &
perfecisti (That which Xerxes, Alexander, Scipio, Augustus, Constantine and
Maximian, were they alive, would not even attempt, you, Louis, not only
attempted but achieved).20

18. See, for example, J. Grangier, Panegyricus dicatus Ludovico XIII Regi Francorum pio, iusto,
invicto (Paris, 1620); A. de Sainte-Marthe, Panegyricus Ludovico XIII regi christianissimo [scriptus]
(Paris, 1621) and Panegyricus alter, Ludovico Iusto regi christianissimo [scriptus] (Paris, 1623).
19. M. Le Roy de Gomberville, Remarques sur la vie du Roy et sur celle d'Alexandre Seuere. Contenant
la comparaison de ces deux grands Princes, & comme les propheties de l'heureux regne du Roy
(Paris, 1622). This work, in which the 22-year-old Gomberville sought to gain the favour of
the monarch, purports to be a work of historical scholarship but in fact follows closely
(pseudo-) AElius Lampridius's life of Severus in the late-fourth-century Historia Augusta, a
new edition of which had been published by Claude Saumaise two years earlier (Historiae
Augustae Scriptores VI, Paris, 1620).
20. C. B. Morisot, Panegyricus Ludovico lusto scriptus (Dijon, 1629), p. 36.

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 Bannister 45

Above all, he h
wall: 'Qui peut
think that thi
bridge built o
Alexander for
achievement:

lam tamen a fundo maris in altitudinem modicam opus excreverat, nondum tamen
aquae fastigium aequabat, cum Tyrii levibus navigiis admoti per ludibrium
exprobrabant illos armis inclytos dorso, sicut iumenta, onera gestare: interrogabant
etiam num maior Neptuno esset Alexander. (Already the work had risen from
the seabed to a moderate height, though not yet above the water-level,
when the Tyrians in their light craft mockingly upbraided those famed
warriors for transporting loads on their backs, like pack-horses; and they
enquired whether Alexander was greater than Neptune.)22

Louis's sea-wall, in contrast, was a lasting monument to his military genius:

Nostra nec undarum incursu labefacta, nec atris

Turbinibus convulsa, mines, & inania ridet
Proelia ventorum, fundoque immota resistit.

(Our wall is not weakened by the assaults of the waves, nor broken up by
hostile storms; it mocks explosions and the vain onslaught of the winds; it
rises still unshaken from the seabed.)23

He could surpass all the heroes of Rome:

Tu alter Marcellus eris, qui eversis templis, sacrisque succurras. Tu alter Fabius,
qui Gallis omnia restituas, sed longiore lucis munere quam Marcellus; illum enim
vix terris ostenderunt fata, te vero diu perennem servabunt: Et fortiore numine
quam Fabius; ille enim senior & cunctans: tu iuvenis & ter victor in uno anno
fuisti. (You will be a second Marcellus, coming to re-establish the plundered
temples and holy places; you will be a second Fabius, restoring all things
rightfully to the French. Yet you will have the gift of longer life than
Marcellus, for the fates vouchsafed the earth only a glimpse of him, whilst
they will serve you unceasingly. And you will have greater power than
Fabius, for he was older and ever cautious, whereas you are young and
have been thrice victorious in one year.)24

21. Breval, Au Roy, sur la prise de La Rochelle (Paris, 1628), p. 5.

22. J. Grangier, Orationes de Rupellana expeditione (Paris, 1629), II, 19.
23. De Ludovici XIII Rebus ad Rupellam Gestis. Panegyricum Carmen (s.l.n.d.), p. 13; cf. E. Petiot,
Panegyricus Ludovici XIII Vindici rebellionis, domitori elementorum, aeterno triumphatori (Bor-
deaux, 1637), pp. 78-79.
24. loan. Dartis [...1 De expeditione regia in Anglos, et deditione Rupellae, Oratio (Paris, 1629), p. 9. The
echoes of Virgil (ostendent terris hunc tantum fata and tu Marcellus eris, Aeneid VI, 869, 883)
are no doubt intended to imply that Louis too, like Aeneas, will be the precursor of unprec-
edented glory for his country. Other figures of the ancient world whom Louis has sur-

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46 International Journal of the Classical Tradition / Summer 2001

The seeking out of suitable classical references for comparisons became a stan-
dard technique for historians as well as panegyrists. In the dedication of his Histoire de
Louis le Juste, Scipion Dupleix picked out achievements from the reign of Louis XIII
and drew parallels with those of ancient heroes, but in each case to the clear advantage
of Louis. Alexander had conquered the Persians, an effeminate nation; Louis con-
quered the most warlike nations. Hannibal had crossed the Alps in two weeks but lost
a third of his army even though only a few mountain-dwellers stood in his way; Louis
crossed the Alps in one week and only lost a hundred men against a whole army
defending the passes. Scipio took Carthage and Numantia but the former had no
warships and the latter no walls; Louis took La Rochelle and Nancy, the two strongest
cities in Europe, one in less than a year, the other in two weeks; and so on.25 The same
approach was applied to other major figures. Richelieu was told by Puget de la Serre
that the parallel he was proposing with Scipio Africanus did honour to the Roman
since each of the heroes of antiquity had some quality to be found in Richelieu, the
epitome of all virtues.26
Louis XIII and Richelieu died within six months of each other in 1642-43 and,
with the new king not yet five years old, their place as the main subject for panegyrics
was taken by a young general who seemed to embody all the qualities of martial skill
and aristocratic fougue that France's involvement in the Thirty Years War since 1635
had brought to the fore. In 1643 the Duc d'Enghien, later to become known as le Grand
Cond6, inflicted the first of a series of spectacular defeats on the Spanish and Imperial
armies. After the victory over the Spanish army at Rocroi in 1643, he routed the
Imperial forces at Freiburg in 1644 and at N6rdlingen in 1645. In 1646, it was the
Spanish again at Dunkirk and then the outstanding victory at Lens in 1648. There was
obviously scope here for encomiasts to give free rein to their imagination, and, with
attention clearly concentrated on heroic military achievements, comparisons with the
great generals of antiquity flourished.
Saint-Evremond was later to claim that, after Rocroi, Enghien/Cond6 was com-
pared to his ancestor, Francois de Bourbon, the victor of Cerisoles, after Freiburg to
Germanicus (inevitably, perhaps), after Nordlingen to Alexander and after Dunkirk to
Julius Caesar. After Lens, he added, the comparisons ceased and he was assumed to be
unique.27 A study of the panegyric literature, however, suggests that this is a consider-

passed include Augustus and Titus (J. Cusinot, Oratio de foelici Rupellae deditione, Paris, 1628,
pp. 52-53), Cyrus the Great (P. F. de Gondi, De christianissimo rege Ludovico Iusto eiusque
Rupellana divinitus parta victoria Panegyricus, s.l.n.d., pp.1-3) and Caesar and Pompey (J.
Isnard, Ludovico XIII rebellis Rupellae domitori Gratiarum Actio, Paris, 1629, pp. 27-28).
25. S. Dupleix, Histoire de Louis le Juste XIII du nom, Roy de France et de Navarre (Paris, 1635), Au
Roy.
26. J. Puget de la Serre, Le Portrait de Scipion l'Africain, ou l'image de la gloire et de la vertu
representee au naturel dans celle de Monseigneur le Cardinal Duc de Richelieu (Bordeaux, 1641),
Part U, Preface. According to La Serre, there is no comparison between the walls of Babylon
and those of La Rochelle, between Cyrus's palace and the many abbeys founded by Richelieu,
between the conquest of Carthage and the taking of La Rochelle. Erica Harth devotes a
section (pp. 68-96) of her Ideology and Culture in Seventeenth-Century France (Ithaca and
London: Cornell University Press, 1983) to a consideration of the role of the "portrait book",
including La Serre's Scipion, in Richelieu's strategy for the enhancement of the monarchy
and his own prestige in relation to that of the great nobles.
27. C. de Marguetel de Saint-Denis de Saint-Evremond, Eloge de Mr le Prince, Bibl. de 1'Arsenal,
Paris MS 3135.

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Bannister 47

able oversimp
1643, the mai
won the battl
with Alexande
and now took
life of Enghie
young, had ac
age; both disp
Serre makes sp
respective car
Thebans; cross
by the crossin
Tyre parallels
tably surpass

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persuade que si
pas, la Terre es
pour borner v
rapidly than
Master of the
leads you to
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Similar comp
Chapelain took
in which, ami
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and overthrow
Enghien's sup
attested by th
could take up
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planning whic
While Alexan

28. J. Puget de
fameux monarqu
29. Charrier, Les
30. J. Chapelain
31. The frontis
with laurel ins
motto Hoc opu
motto Hoc opu
below, and th
device, though
Virtue holding
Work of Natur
Work of Intelle

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48 International Journal of the Classical Tradition / Summer 2001

comparisons were made between Conde and Julius Caesar, despite Saint-Evremond's
claims. Partly, no doubt, that was due to the lack of appropriate parallels with the
career of Caesar whose military successes did not begin until he was nearly forty, but a
more substantial explanation is to be found in the nature of the cult of heroism in
France in the first half of the seventeenth century, which emerged out of the interac-
tion of particular ideological factors at work during the ministries of Richelieu and
Mazarin. As indicated above, the decline of neo-stoicism allowed the emergence of a
view of human nature which legitimated the passions, provided they were controlled
by the will. At the same time, belief in an "old order", obscurely felt to be rooted in
traditions dating back to the origins of the French monarchy and connected to the idea
of a morally autonomous aristocracy with only a loose contractual relationship with
the state, came into conflict with the centralizing forces that had been at work since the
sixteenth century, now focused and strengthened by Richelieu. The result amongst the
more educated sections of society was a fascination with the concept of the exceptional
individual who prized above all his moral freedom, a fascination which was exploited
by writers of imaginative literature who explored the implications of the clash of
values taking place around them.
A perennial point of interpretative tension was the question of whether being
heroic could involve anticipating what fate or fortune might bring and taking steps to
ensure that the desired end was achieved, or whether the true hero faced up resolutely
to every challenge offered by fate, taking no thought for the outcome but concerned
above all to ensure that he behaved at all times in a heroic manner, thus demonstrating
that the only necessary outcome was the maintenance intact of his reputation as a
hero. Generally speaking, the latter view was associated with the aristocratic ethic: its
partisans felt that to concern oneself with ends rather than means was to come danger-
ously close to the raison d'Etat practised by Richelieu and his henchmen who were felt
to have been inspired by the odious Machiavelli. Proponents of the former view, on
the other hand, claimed that an element of prudence or foresight was necessary in the
character of a heroic being and that many of the world's greatest heroes would have
been less heroic without it.32
This point of debate had always been a feature of the argument as to whether
Alexander or Caesar was the greater man, an argument which went back at least as far
as Plutarch,33 and was still alive in the years preceding the Fronde. It was fuelled by
the publication of various works, on the one hand La Serre's popularizing account of
Alexander's career in 1641, followed in 1646 by Perrot d'Ablancourt's translation of
the version of Alexander's expedition into Asia by Arrianus and in 1653 by Vaugelas's
translation of the life of Alexander by Quintus Curtius; on the other hand, in 1636 the

32. See E. Thuau, Raison d'Etat et pensee politique a l'dpoque de Richelieu (Paris: Armand Colin,
1966) for a detailed study of the crucial years in the 1630s when Richelieu's supporters
made strenuous efforts to justify a Christian form of prudence which they claimed could be
reconciled with Roman political principles and with Aristotle's phronesis but which was not
tainted by Machiavellianism. On the ways in which the debate found its way into fictional
literature, see M. Bannister, Privileged Mortals: the French heroic novel, 1630-1660 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1983), Ch. 3.
33. Montaigne had considered the evidence and had concluded 'toutes pieces ramassdes et mises
en la balance, je ne puis que je ne panche du costg d'Alexandre' ('having collected and weighed
all the evidence, I cannot do other than side with Alexander'), Essais, Liv.II, chap. XXXVI,
ed. cit., p.734.

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 Bannister 49

duc de Rohan
Perrot d'Ablan
The continuin
therefore cond
despite his fa
moral autonom
fines of comm
Alexandre, con
instance, were
an expression
return.

Quand Cesar n'avoit pas la Justice de son c6td, il en cherchoit les apparences: les
pretextes ne lui manquoient jamais. Alexandre ne donnoit au monde pour raisons
que ses Volontis: il suivoit partout son Ambition ou son Humeur (When Caesar
did not have justice on his side, he sought to give the appearance of it, and
did not lack suitable pretexts. Alexander gave the world no reasons other
than his own will: everywhere, he followed his ambition or his humour).

His summing up captures the flavour of the debate at this time:

par des moyens pratiquables, Cesar a execute les plus grandes choses; ... [et] il s'est
fait le premier des Romains. Alexandre eftoit naturellement au dessus des Hommes:
vous diriez qu'il 6toit nd le Maitre de l'Univers, & que dans ses Expeditions il alloit
moins combattre des Ennemis, que se faire reconnoftre de ses Peuples (Caesar
carried out the grandest designs by practicable means; ... and made himself
into the first among Romans. Alexander was naturally superior to other
men: you would say that he had been born master of the universe and that
his expeditions were not so much a matter of fighting his enemies as of
going to be recognized by his own peoples).35

When it came to finding a parallel for Conde, therefore, the encomiasts had little
choice: only Alexander could be compared with this young and charismatic general
who embodied the virtues of self-confident individualism that were so much admired
in the 1640s. It was in any case known that Conde greatly admired the Macedonian,
especially his conviction that, wherever he found men, he would find subjects eager to
obey him.36 Alexander took his place at the head of the hierarchy of the heroes of
antiquity.

34. N. Perrot d'Ablancourt, Les Guerres d'Alexandre par Arrian (Paris, 1646); C. F. de Vaugelas,
Quinte Curce, de la vie et des actions d'Alexandre le Grand (Paris, 1653); Henri II, duc de Rohan,
Le parfaict capitaine. Autrement l'abrege" des guerres de la Gaule des Commentaires de Cesar (Paris,
1636); N. Perrot d'Ablancourt, Les Commentaires de Cesar (Paris, 1650). Saint-Evremond re-
ported in his Jugement sur Cesar et sur Alexandre that, following the publication of these
translations, everyone was taking sides in the debate about the respective merits of Alexander
and Caesar.

35. CEuvres, 2 vols. (Paris: La Compagnie Typographique, 1954), II, 342-43.

36. Ibid., II, 337.

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50 International Journal of the Classical Tradition / Summer 2001

Cond6's star waned as a result of his behaviour during the Fronde (1648-53). He
rebelled against the king's chief minister, Mazarin (though not, he always claimed,
against the king), was condemned to death in absentia and fought for seven years in
alliance with Spain before being pardoned and received back into the good graces of
Louis XIV in 1659. The charges against him had implied that he wanted to behave like
another Alexander, conquering in order to gain more glory for himself, whereas the
new post-Fronde ethos condemned all such ambitions in any but the king. Under the
new order, all personal aspirations were to be expressed in terms of service to the
monarch who embodied all the nation's desire for glory. It was necessary, therefore,
for the crown to take control of the myth of Alexander and demonstrate that Louis
alone deserved to be compared to him. During the 1660s, when Conde was almost
entirely ignored by encomiasts, the process of royal mythogenesis concentrated on
establishing the king's credentials as the new Alexander. The series of large-scale
paintings of scenes from the Macedonian's career executed by Le Brun, with implied
parallels with Louis's status, is the most obvious manifestation of this process, but
literary works such as Racine's Alexandre le Grand (1666) and a range of panegyrics in
prose and verse applied the same persuasive pressure.37
The effort was not maintained for long, however. Within a very few years, it was
generally recognized that Alexander was not a suitable model for the French king to
emulate. His undoubted military genius and heroic vision could not counterbalance
the vices and weaknesses that were so apparent in the accounts of his life or provide
the moral basis for a Christian king's rule in the infinitely more complex modem
world. The point at which this recognition occurred has been variously assigned, by
Grell to around 1670, by Apostolides to 1674, by Ferrier-Caveriviere to 1678, by Burke
to around 1680.38 It is evident, however, that what took place was more than a simple
rejection of one classical icon on the grounds that his character did not measure up to
the standards expected. The change was qualitative. In the case of Cond6 and other
military figures of the seventeenth century, Alexander represented the benchmark, the
quintessence of heroism to which they could aspire: a comparison with him validated
their exceptional qualities and achievements. The same was true of Augustus in the
political sphere. A monarch could be measured against him and his success as a
bringer of peace, a magnanimous law-giver, a patron of the arts registered accord-
ingly. In the case of Louis, as long as he had not carried out any military exploits,
efforts were made to show that he was the modemrn incarnation of Alexander. As soon
as it could be claimed that he was a successful military leader (i.e., after the campaigns
in the Netherlands and Franche-Comte in 1667 and 1668, successful indeed though
owing little to Louis's contribution), the pattern of adulation changed. Louis himself
became the embodiment of heroism and was henceforth depicted as an almost mysti-
cal force, controlling battles and inspiring his troops even when he was not present. As

37. See M. Bannister, Conde in Context: ideological change in seventeenth-century France (Oxford:
Legenda, 2000), Chs. 7 and 8.
38. C. Grell and C. Michel, L'Ecole des Princes, ou Alexandre disgracie' (Paris: Les Belles Lettres,
1988), p. 76; J. Apostolides, Le Roi-machine: spectacle et politique au temps de Louis XIV (Paris:
Minuit, 1981), pp. 135-36; N. Ferrier-Caveriviere, L'Image de Louis XIV dans la litterature
francaise de 1660 a 1715 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1981), p. 159; P. Burke, The
Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 131.

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 Bannister 51

Ferrier-Caveri
que l'hroi'sme
with Alexand
heroism to w

Parmy les p
On a cherc
D'un Heros
Louis enfin
On n'y tro
Et pour les p
C'est qu'il m
Que personn

(Amongst th
has long been
one drawback
the standard
it).40

Comparisons between Louis and Augustus were similarly otiose. There was no need
for the French to look back in order to observe the Augustan Age. Paris was the new
Rome, proudly displaying the first permanent triumphal arches to have been built
since the days of the Empire.41 The architecture, art and embellishment that Louis had
bestowed on the city were such that the ancient world had nothing comparable to
offer in terms of parallels:

Par toy ton siecle est noble en sciences, en arts;

Et si l'on en croit les oracles,
Ii doit surpasser en miracles
Le Siecle des Heros & celuy des Cesars.

(Because of you, the sciences and arts have ennobled this age; and, if the
oracles are to be believed, it will surpass in its miracles the Age of Heroes
and the Age of the Caesars.)

39. N. Ferrier-Caveriviere, 'La Guerre dans la litterature franCaise depuis le trait4 des Pyrenees
jusqu'a la mort de Louis XIV', Dix-septiwme Sikcle 37 (148: 1985), p. 241; see also J.-P. Neraudau,
L'Olympe du Roi-soleil, ser. Nouveaux confluents (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1986), pp. 116 et
seq.
40. La Tuillibre, Essays a la louange du Roy (Paris, 1672), p. 14.
41. The first triumphal arch was erected on the Place du Tr6ne in 1660 for the entry of Louis
and his new queen into Paris. Subsequently, in the 1670s, two of the old city-gates (Porte
Saint-Antoine and Porte Saint-Bernard) were rebuilt as triumphal arches, symbolizing the
shift in the French military posture from defensive to dominant, and two new arches were
erected (Porte Saint-Denis and Porte Saint-Martin). Only the last two are still standing, the
other three having been demolished during the eighteenth century. See M. Petzet, 'Das
Triumphbogenmonument fiir Ludwig XIV. auf der Place du Tr6ne', Zeitschrift far
Kunstgeschichte 45/2 (1982), 145-94.

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52 International Journal of the Classical Tradition / Summer 2001

Louis had become the monarch

Qui par sa gloire doit 6teindre

Tout ce que la fable a pz2 feindre
Des Heros dont les Grecs ont remply leurs dcrits.

(who, by his glory, shall extinguish all that fantasy has invented about the
heroes who fill the writings of the Greeks.)42

It is tempting to explain this change solely as an aspect of the Quarrel of the Ancients
and Moderns, the series of polemics that occupied the energies of major figures in the
literary world during the last twenty years of the seventeenth century, and the link is
certainly a strong one. A newly confident France could claim to have replaced Spain as
the major power in Europe and, with the crown declaring the glory of Louis and the
success of his endeavours in all areas, it is not surprising that voices were raised to
express the superiority of the modern era over the ancient and of Louis over Alexander
and Augustus.43
However, the change had longer roots than might at first be thought. As we have
seen, it was the emergence of a heroic ethic that drove panegyrists to seek models in
the classical world. A belief in the power of the will and the legitimacy of the passions,
if properly controlled, inspired several generations to select heroic figures from antiq-
uity, to present them in plays and romances as the object of admiration and emulation
and to use them in panegyrics to validate the praises heaped upon a contemporary
endowed with the heroic virtues. In the 1660s, that ethic was still sufficiently alive to
justify validating Louis XIV by comparing him to Alexander, just as his father, Louis
XIII, and Conde had been. It was, however, already giving way before a realization
that the will could not necessarily control the passions and that what had been held to
be heroic virtue might well be made up of less admirable motives. In the 1670s, the
morally autonomous individual was no longer the ideal: the recognized standard for
the exemplary member of society was now the honnete homme, and the king was seen
to be qualitatively different, not really a man like his subjects but the embodiment of
all the higher aspirations of the nation. In such a world, it was no longer appropriate
to make comparisons between the king and the heroes of antiquity who, however
impressive they might have been, were still tainted with weaknesses, such as
Alexander's drunkenness, or with a record of political manipulation, as in the case of
Caesar and Augustus. The classical world had been surpassed and its history and
legends could return to their original function of adding embellishment to literary
works.

42. J. Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, Le Triomphe de Louis et de son siecle (Paris, 1674), pp. 2, 5.
43. The 'Ancients' were not, however, blindly devoted to everything represented by the ancient
world. As Marc Fumaroli has argued in his penetrating essay 'Les abeilles et les araign6es',
in: La Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, ed. M. Fumaroli, ser. Collection Folio. Classique
(Paris: Gallimard-Folio, 2001), pp. 7-218, they tried to show that Louis embodied the true
grandeur of the classical heroes, which transcended the vices of the ancient world, just as he
also rose above the vices of the modern world with all its petty flatterers.

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Bannister 53

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54 International Journal of the Classical Tradition / Summer 2001

Figure 2.

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 Bannister 55

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56 International Journal of the Classical Tradition / Summer 2001

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 Bannister 57

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58 International Journal of the Classical Tradition / Summer 2001

Figures 1-5

1. Enghien and Renown

Jean Puget de la Serre, L'Alexandre ou les Paralleles de Monseigneur le Duc d'Anguien avec
ce fameux Monarque (Paris, 1645).

Enghien is shown near the battlefield holding his general's baton, which played a
symbolic part in several of the legends surrounding him, while winged Renown with
her trumpet holds his horse, ready to proclaim his next victory over the Spanish which
will inevitably follow. The banderole bears the words:

Tout flechit sous ses loix, tout cede ta sa valeur,

La Fortune le suit, la Gloire l'acompaigne;
II brave les perils, il dompte le malheur,
Et jusques dans Madrid il fait trembler l'Espaigne.

(All things bow to his will, all gives way before his valour,
Fortune follows him, Glory accompanies him;
He confronts danger and overcomes misfortune,
And, as far away as Madrid, Spain trembles before him.)

2. Alexander the Great

Jean Puget de la Serre, L'Alexandre ou les Paralleles de Monseigneur le Duc d'Anguien avec
ce fameux Monarque (Paris, 1645).

Alexander appears alone, dominating the world, as his legend requires. However, the
caption,

Apres s'estre fait voir sur la terre et sur l'onde,

Tout couvert des lauriers que son bras moissonoit;
Apres s'estre rendu maistre de tout le monde,
Il trouve dans la mort la gloire qu'il cherchoit

(Having shown himself on land and sea,

Covered in the laurels his arm had reaped;
Having made himself master of the whole world,
He found in death the glory he had sought)

demonstrates the extent of La Serre's eulogizing of Enghien, for, here as throughout

the Paralleles, the implication is that, whereas Alexander achieved true glory only after
his death, Enghien's glory is already equal to that of Alexander while he is still alive.

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Bannister 59

3. Templum

Jean Puget de
ce fameux Mo
de Monseigneu

The two med

respectively A
and Enghien,
The implicatio
the Paralleles
which Alexan
serts that Eng
(a wonder unk

4. Alexander

Jean Puget de
ce fameux Mon

Enghien is sh
an orb as be
Alexander's sc
royal Bourbon
suggested tha

Tu vois icy de
Ce premier est

(Here you see

The first is in

5. Le Roy, Em

Charles Perra
Courses de test
l'annie 1662 (P

The carrousel
representing
the chief qua
which such re
hallowed trad
ing descriptio
trating entire
and freely us
the horse's na

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