What is "ethopoeia"

Ethopoeia (ee-tho-po-EE-ya)is the ancient Greek term for the creation of a character. Ethopoeia was a technique used by early students of rhetoric in order to create a successful speech or oration by impersonating a subject or client. Ethopoeia contains elements of both ethos and pathos and this in noticeable in the three divisions of ethopoeia. These three divisions are pathetical (dealing with emotions), ethical (dealing with character) and mixed ( a combination of both emotion and character). It is essential to impersonation, one of the fourteen progymnasmata exercises created for the early schools of rhetoric.