Ethos Now to the trivium of persuasion. Aristotle delimited three “kinds” or categories that were present in any and every persuasive discourse: Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character [ethos] of the speaker; the second kind on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind [pathos]; the third on proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself [logos].21 So,
