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In both classical and contemporary rhetoric, advocates rely on tradition to persuade through ethos, pathos, and logos (see chapter 2). Advocates align themselves with historical figures to establish credibility through their projected character (ethos); they remind the audience of important cultural values to evoke emotions (pathos); and they attempt to persuade through appeals to reason by the construction of coherent and logical rhetorical arguments (logos) that, in a common-law system, include references to how the system has handled similar problems before (precedent). In this chapter, comparing and contrasting the use of tradition in a classical and a contemporary persuasive argument gives us insight into the three modes of persuasion as well as a commonly used type (topos) of argument.