the
_Discourses_ of "the grave Greek moralist," known probably through a
Latin version (cf. II, i, 157), must have been almost as close to
Chapman's hand while he was writing _The Revenge_ as Grimeston's
compilation. Five long passages in the play (I, i, 336-42, II, i,
157-60, II, i, 211-32, III, iv, 58-75, and III, iv, 127-41) are
translated or adapted from specific _dicta_ in the _Discourses_, while
Epictetus's work in its whole ethical teaching furnished material for
the delineation of the ideal Stoic (IV, iv, 14-46) who

"May with heavens immortall powers compare,
To whom the day and fortune equall are;
Come faire or foule, what ever chance can fall,
Fixt in himselfe, hee still is one to all."

But in the character of Clermont there mingle other elements than those
derived from either the historical figure of D'Auvergne, or the ideal
man of Stoic speculation. Had Hamlet never faltered in the task of
executing justice upon the murderer of his father, it is doubtful if a
brother of Bussy would ever have trod the Jacobean stage. Not indeed
that the idea of vengeance being sought for D'Ambois's fate by one of
his nearest kith and kin was without basis in fact. But it was a sister,
not a brother, who had devoted her own and her husband's energies to the
task, though finally the matter had been compromised. De Thou, at the
close of his account of Bussy's murder, relates (vol. III, lib. LXVII,
p. 330):

"_Inde odia capitalia inter Bussianos et Monsorellum exorta:
quorum exercendorum onus in se suscepit Joannes Monlucius
Balagnius, . . . ducta in matrimonium occisi Bussii sorore,
magni animi foemina quae faces irae maritali subjiciebat:
vixque post novennium certis conditionibus jussu regis inter
eum et Monsorellum transactum fuit._"[xxxvii-1]

In a later passage (vol. V, lib. CXVIII, p. 558) he is even more
explicit. After referring to Bussy's treacherous assassination, he
continues:

"_Quam injuriam Renata ejus soror, generosa foemina et supra
sexum ambitiosa, a fratre proximisque neglectam, cum inultam
manere impatientissime ferret, Balagnio se ultorem profitente,
spretis suorum monitis in matrimonium cum ipso
consensit._"[xxxvii-2]

As these passages first appeared in De Thou's History in the edition of
1620, they cannot have been known to Chapman, when he was writing _The
Revenge_. But the circumstances must have been familiar to h