In act 2, scene 1 of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Brutus has agreed to join the conspiracy against Caesar, and the conspirators have made their plans. But Brutus's wife, Portia, is concerned about her husband, and she wants him to tell her what is going on and why he has been so upset and secretive. She uses ethos, pathos, and logos to try to convince him.

Ethos refers to the moral argument. Portia argues that she is joined to Brutus in marriage and therefore should know his secrets. She prepares his meals, brings comfort to his bed, and converses with him, but, she implies, if he will not share his confidences with her, she is really not his wife at all. She is more his harlot than his wife. Portia uses the moral argument that Brutus is morally bound not to keep secrets from his wife, but this argument also has elements of logos (logical argument), for Portia is quite logical in how she sets up her position.

Portia uses logos again when she grants that she is a woman but argues convincingly that since she is both Cato's daughter and Brutus' wife, she is stronger than most women and can certainly merit being taken into her husband's confidence and trusted to keep his secrets. Portia combines this argument with a strong element of pathos (appeal to emotions) by stabbing herself in the thigh as proof that she is "man enough" to be told what Brutus is up to.

Finally, Portia uses pathos when she tries to charm Brutus into telling her by appealing to him on her knees and speaking of his vows of love and her worries that he is ill.

None of these efforts work, of course, and Brutus leaves the house without telling Portia that he is planning to help assassinate Julius Caesar.