When Words Become Weapons of Deception — The Essays of Montaigne

Montaigne mocks rhetoricians who boast of making little things look great, like a shoemaker fitting a grand shoe to a small foot. Stable republics kept orators at a distance; Socrates and Plato called rhetoric flattery that corrupts judgment, not truth.

His Italian kitchen clerk describes sauces and appetites with the gravity of governing an empire, and architects thunder about Corinthian orders while building, Montaigne says, his kitchen door. Flowery grammar terms sound exotic but resemble chambermaid chatter.

Eloquence thrives in chaotic times because crowds follow sound before reason. Montaigne ends weary of careless greatness: moderns hand out divine titles and the surname great to princes who are merely ordinary.