Ethopoeia

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Ethopoeia is the ancient Greek technique of creating and acting out a character in a speech. By impersonating a subject or client, a speaker aims to persuade. It blends ethos (character) and pathos (emotion). There are three parts: pathetical (emotional), ethical (about character), and mixed (both).

It is a form of impersonation, one of the progymnasmata exercises taught in early rhetoric schools. Ethopoeia means capturing the ideas, words, and delivery of the person for whom the speech is written, and tailoring it to the exact situation and audience. The audience and context greatly affect its effectiveness. The speaker must choose a character the audience will trust and one that fits the occasion. It also seeks the right lines of argument to win the case.

Historically, Aristotle thought every rhetor used ethopoeia, though some of his contemporaries saw it as mainly for playwrights. He emphasized acting in the present and noted that concealing the impersonation can help win listeners. Plato viewed it as potentially deceitful or trickery. Lysias, a famous early speechwriter, used ethopoeia to defend his client Euphiletos in On the Murder of Eratosthenes by presenting Euphiletos as innocent and Eratosthenes as a villain. In literature, ethopoeia appears in the Iliad, when Priam speaks to Achilles to move him to return Hector’s body. Isocrates also stressed that a speaker’s character matters for persuasion.