Ethopoeia
Speaking in another person's character, imitating their manner of thought and speech.
Ethopoeia — "character-making" — was a standard school exercise in antiquity: students composed the words a known figure would speak in a given situation. What would Achilles say on hearing of Patroclus' death?
The exercise trained decorum, the matching of style to speaker. Success was judged not on eloquence but on fit: whether the speech sounded like that person, in that circumstance, at that moment.
Its legacy runs through dramatic monologue, historical fiction, and courtroom narrative, and it is directly relevant to quotation ethics: ancient histories often contain composed speeches written in this tradition rather than transcripts.
Common mistake: quoting an ancient speech as verbatim testimony. Thucydides himself explained that he wrote what he judged each speaker would have said; that sentence should govern how such passages are cited.
“The speeches in this history were composed as I thought each speaker would have said what was required of him.”
Keep reading the glossary
A figure in which the speaker gives voice to an absent, dead, or non-human entity, letting it speak in the first person.
Inventing speech for a real or imagined person to reveal their character.
Word-for-word — quoting exactly as the original was spoken or written.
The original record of a quote — the book, letter, speech, or recording in which it first appeared.