idolopoeia

Noun

eidolopoeia (uncountable)

1. (rhetoric) A rhetorical technique in which a speech is attributed to a deceased person, a phantom, an image or an idol.
   • 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 eidolopoeia2003, “The Preliminary Exercises of Aphthonius the Sophist”, in George Alexander Kennedy, editor, Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric, Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands...