Allegory of the Cave
The ancient Greeks applied the term to anything: for example, the excellence of a chimney, the excellence of a bull for breeding, and the excellence of a man. The meaning of the word changes depending on what it describes since everything has its own peculiar excellence; the "arete" of a man is different from the "arete" of a horse. This way of thinking comes first from Plato, where it can be seen in the Allegory of the Cave. In particular, the aristocratic class was presumed, essentially by definition, to be exemplary of "arete": "The root of the word is the same as "aristos", the word which shows superlative ability and superiority, and "aristos" was constantly used in the plural to denote the nobility."