The characterization of a person, by putting a speech into his mouth (ἠθοποιία), was another department of exercise. It is defined as μίμησις ἤθους ὑποκειμένου προσώπου. Three types are given, not very clearly distinguished from one another:
Εἰδωλοποιία—when a well-known character no longer living is made to speak, as in the Δῆμοι of Eupolis. (Apparently only local or political people are meant.)
Προσωποποιία—when both words and speaker are imagined.
Ἠθοποιία proper—when the person is known from literature, and words are put into his mouth to illustrate his character.
The classes of Ethopoeia proper may be described as:
Emotional (παθητικαί), e.g. the words Hecuba would have uttered on the fall of Troy.
‘Ethical’ (ἠθικαί), e.g. what a man who had never seen the sea would say on beholding the Mediterranean.
Mixed, e.g. what Achilles would have said over the body of Patroclus. The style is to be clear, and the sentences short, ‘flowery’ (ἀνθηρῷ),[450] antithetical, without adornment or involved figures. An example of Emotional Ethopoeia, illustrating the divisions past, present, and future, is given by a speech put into Niobe’s mouth on the death of her children.
Next comes Description (ἔκφρασις) of persons or things. Descriptive extracts from Homer and Thucydides are given, with the general counsel that the describer must adapt himself to his subject in every way. Only two classes are suggested: simple (descriptions of actions) and complex (descriptions of action and place). The citadel of Alexandria is the stock example.