Conversation in antiquity had been the speech of friends and familiarity—and insofar as friendship motivated conversation as a mode of inquiry, that friendship oriented conversation toward reason and virtue. The Renaissance witnessed a long shift in the nature of friendship, culminating in the thought of Montaigne, away from an alignment with reason and virtue and toward an alignment with passion and familiarity. This changing nature of friendship brought with it a corresponding change in the nature of conversation, which now also based itself upon passion and familiarity—including in its use as a mode of inquiry. In other words, the expressive aspects of sermo, which communicated character in an intimate manner, now became the basis of the philosophical aspect of sermo, the inquiry into truth. The communication of intimate, passionate friendship was now the prerequisite for the search for truth. Furthermore, the development of intimate friendship and the development of friendship with and among women went hand and hand in Renaissance and early modern Europe; together, they came to associate women, as women, with conversation and the inquiry into truth. This association radically differentiated conversation from both oratory and philosophical reason, which would remain, respectively, the speech of wrangling and disputatious men.