The concept of ethos has long been a part of rhetoric. For Isocrates, Quintilian, and Cicero, it consists of one's overall character. For these rhetoricians, ethos was so much a part of rhetoric that one could not be a good speaker without also being a "good man". Their perception of the rhetor was one that assumed a person dedicated to civic duty and social responsibility.

Aristotle brought ethos into the study of the text itself and only. He claims that ethos persuades "whenever the speech is spoken in such a way as to make the speaker worthy of credence . . . And this should result from the speech, not from a previous opinion that the speaker is a certain kind of person" (38). Aristotle's stress on the importance of character as manifested within a text is magnified by his later claim that "character is almost so to speak, the controlling factor in persuasion" (38). Of course, Aristotle's theory of ethos and rhetoric influenced Western thought immeasurably and are still influential in contemporary views.