ABSTRACT
The word “ethical” is normally used to mean something like “moral,” “virtuous,” “principled,” etc. But “ethical” and “ethics” ultimately derive from the Greek word, “e¯thos,” which had a range of meanings that include custom, usage, character, disposition, bearing, manner. Aristotle uses e¯thos in the Poetics to designate characters in drama and their moral quality as inferred or constructed by audiences. When a playwright (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides) borrows a character from epic or other sources and remodels it, in Aristotelian parlance he “imitates” that character, as does the actor who plays the role. Aristotle uses the term e¯thos again in the Rhetoric to designate the “character” a speaker assumes – performs, or imitates – in order to persuade his audience of his moral authority.
