An arête is a thin, almost knife-like, ridge of rock which is typically formed when two glaciers erode parallel U-shaped valleys. The arête is a thin ridge of rock that is left separating the two valleys. Arêtes can also form when two glacial cirques erode headwards towards one another, although frequently this results in a saddle-shaped pass, called a col.[1] The edge is then sharpened by freeze-thaw weathering. The word "arête" is actually French for edge or ridge
from Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arête
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Arete (Greek: ἀρετή; pronounced /ˈærətiː/ in English), in its basic sense, means excellence of any kind. In its earliest appearance in Greek, this notion of excellence was ultimately bound up with the notion of the fulfillment of purpose or function: the act of living up to one's full potential. Arete in ancient Greek culture was courage and strength in the face of adversity and it was to what all people aspired.
In Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, "arete" is used mainly to describe heroes and nobles and their mobile dexterity, with special reference to strength and courage, but it is not limited to this. Penelope's arete, for example, relates to co-operation, for which she is praised by Agamemnon. The excellence of the gods generally included their power, but, in the Odyssey (13.42), the gods can grant excellence to a life, which is contextually understood to mean prosperity.
Arete was occasionally personified as a goddess, the sister of Harmonia (a personification of concord), daughter of the goddess of justice Praxidike.
Arete and Harmonia were known jointly as the Praxidikai (Exacters of Justice). As with many minor Greek deities, there's little or no real mythical background to Arete, who is used at most as a personification of virtue. The only story involving Arete was originally told in the 5th century BC by the sophist Prodicus, and concerns the early life of the hero Heracles.
At a crossroads, Arete appeared to Heracles as a young maiden, and offered him glory and a life of struggle against evil; her counterpart, Kakia (κακία, "badness"), offered him wealth and pleasure. Heracles chose to follow the path of Arete.
By the 4th and 5th centuries BC, arete as applied to men had developed to include quieter virtues, such as dikaiosyne (justice) and sophrosyne (self-restraint). Plato attempted to produce a moral philosophy that incorporated this new usage,[3] but it was in the work of Aristotle that the doctrine of arete found its fullest flowering. Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean is a paradigm example of his thinking.
Arete has also been used by Aristotle when talking about athletic training and also the education of young boys. Stephen G. Miller delves into this usage in his book "Ancient Greek Athletics". Aristotle is quoted as deliberating between education towards arete "...or those that are theoretical". Educating towards arete in this sense means that the boy would be educated towards things that are useful in life. But even Aristotle himself says that arete is not something that can be agreed upon. He says, "Nor is there even an agreement about what constitutes arete, something that leads logically to a disagreement about the appropriate training for arete. To say that arete has a common definition of excellence or fulfillment may be an overstatement simply because it was very difficult to pinpoint arete, much less the proper ways to go about obtaining it.
--edited for conciseness and chronological order from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arete
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