eidolopoeia

English edit

From Ancient Greek εἰδωλοποιία (eidōlopoiía, “formation of images; putting words into the mouth of a dead person”), from εἰδωλοποιός (eidōlopoiós, “producing phantom-like appearances”), from εἴδωλον (eídōlon, “phantom”) + ποιός (poiós, “-like”).

eidolopoeia (uncountable)

(rhetoric) A rhetorical technique in which a speech is attributed to a deceased person, a phantom, an image or an idol.
- 2003, “The Preliminary Exercises of Aphthonius the Sophist”, in George Alexander Kennedy, editor, Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric‎^[1], Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands, Footnote 79, page 115.:
  The status of the speaker at the time the speech is imagined as being given is what determines whether it is ethopoeia or eidolopoeia. A speech Heracles might have given while alive is an example of ethopoeia, a speech he might have given after death is an eidolopoeia

rhetorical figure