Étienne or Estienne de La Boétie was a French magistrate, classicist, writer, poet and political theorist, best remembered for his intense and intimate friendship with essayist Michel de Montaigne. His early political treatise Discourse on Voluntary Servitude was posthumously adopted by the Huguenot movement and is sometimes seen as an early influence on modern anti-statist, utopian and civil disobedience thought.