OF THE VANITY OF WORDS A rhetorician of times past said, that to make little things appear great was his profession.

This was a shoemaker, who can make a great shoe for a little foot .-- [A saying of Agesilaus.]--They would in Sparta have sent such a fellow to be whipped for making profession of a tricky and deceitful act; and I fancy that Archidamus, who was king of that country, was a little surprised at the answer of Thucydides, when inquiring of him, which was the better wrestler, Pericles, or he, he replied, that it was hard to affirm; for when I have thrown him, said he, he always persuades the spectators that he had no fall and carries away the prize.
-- [Quintilian, ii.

15.]--The women who paint, pounce, and plaster up their ruins, filling up their wrinkles and deformities, are less to blame, because it is no great matter whether we see them in their natural complexions; whereas these make it their business to deceive not our sight only but our judgments, and to adulterate and corrupt the very essence of things.

The republics that have maintained themselves in a regular and well-modelled government, such as those of Lacedaemon and Crete, had orators in no very great esteem.

Aristo wisely defined rhetoric to be "a science to persuade the people;" Socrates and Plato "an art to flatter and deceive." And those who deny it in the general description, verify it throughout in their precepts.