Peitho

In Greek mythology, Peitho ( or 'winning eloquence') is the personification of persuasion. She is a goddess of charming speech. She is typically presented as an important companion of Aphrodite. Her opposite is Bia, the personification of force. As a personification, she was sometimes imagined as a goddess and sometimes an abstract power with her name used both as a common and proper noun. There is evidence that Peitho was referred to as a goddess before she was referred to as an abstract concept, which is rare for a personification. Peitho represents both sexual and political persuasion. She is associated with the art of rhetoric.

== Family == thumb|278x278px|Fragment depicting Peitho, Aphrodite, and Eros. This skyphos fragment may be the earliest known artistic representation of Peitho, circa 490 B.C.E. (Metropolitan Museum of Art|The Metropolitan Museum of Art).|alt= Peitho's ancestry is unclear, as various authors provide different identities for her parents. Hesiod in Theogony identifies Peitho as the daughter of the Titans Tethys and Oceanus, which would make her an Oceanid and the sister of notable goddesses such as Dione, Doris, and Metis. According to the lyric poet Sappho, she was the daughter of Aphrodite. Aeschylus identifies her as the daughter of Aphrodite in Suppliant Women (Hiketides), but also describes her as the child of Ate in Agamemnon. Nonnus in his Dionysiaca describes the Charites (Graces), an ensemble of goddesses of grace and charm, as including Peitho, Pasithea, and Aglaia, and all of them are identified as daughters of Dionysus. The Hellenistic era elegiac poet Hermesianax also refers to Peitho as one of the Charites. Alcman describes her as the daughter of Prometheia and the sister of Tyche and Eunomia.