Ethos, logos, and pathos are the three pillars of classical persuasion. Ethos is persuasion based on character or credibility. Logos is persuasion based on logic: facts and statistics. Pathos is emotional persuasion: we are convinced to pursue a course of action because we have been made frightened, hopeful or been played on successfully by some other emotion.

From the start of Book I, as he summarizes Satan's and his minion's fall into the pit of hell, Milton surrounds Satan with a negative ethos: he is described in terms that show him to be an evil character: he is a "serpent," one who stirs up "Envy and Revenge," deceitful, proud, "ambitious," "impious" and the enemy of God. He is:

Th' infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile
Stird up with Envy and Revenge, deceiv'd
The Mother of Mankind, what time his Pride
Had cast him out from Heav'n, with all his Host
Of Rebel Angels, by whose aid aspiring
To set himself in Glory above his Peers,
He trusted to have equal'd the most High,
If he oppos'd; and with ambitious aim
Against the Throne and Monarchy of God
Rais'd impious

Beelzebub, rising with Satan from the fiery lake, notes the sorry facts of their situation. They have been shattered and ruined by God, and logically, speaking, put in the worst of situations: their minds and bodies are intact and strong but they have been humiliated and cast into a place of misery. Beelzebub is here applying logos to their situation:

In horrible destruction laid thus low,
As far as Gods and Heav'nly Essences
Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains
Invincible, and vigour soon returns, [ 140 ]
Though all our Glory extinct, and happy state
Here swallow'd up in endless misery.

Satan, however, uses pathos, or emotional persuasion, to stir his legions to battle. He strides forcefully with his spear in hand and rouses them to battle by appealing to their pride, asking them if they are willing to take all that has happened to them lying down and allow God to win? He appeals to their fear, too, saying if they don't rise up now to do battle, their enemy will use thunderbolts to forever nail to the bottom of the sea of fire. If they don't rise now, he says, they never will:

in this abject posture have ye sworn
To adore the Conquerour? ...
His swift pursuers from Heav'n Gates discern
Th' advantage, and descending tread us down
Thus drooping, or with linked Thunderbolts
Transfix us to the bottom of this Gulfe.
Awake, arise, or be for ever fall'n

Satan's emotional appeal works and the legions rally to his cause.