From this hint of a personality serenely proof against the shocks of adversity Chapman elaborated the figure of the "Senecall man," Clermont D'Ambois. In developing his conception he drew, however, not primarily, as this phrase suggests, from the writings of the Roman senator and sage, but from those of the lowlier, though not less authoritative exponent of Stoic doctrine, the enfranchised slave, Epictetus. As is shown, for the first time, in the Notes to this edition, 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]