Hamartia comes from the verb ἁμαρτάνω, which originally means "to miss": archery that does not strike its target. In Homer it is a literal miss of the spear; by the classical period the sense has spread to any error — a poor decision, a misplaced act, and, in an ethical context, a moral fault. In Aristotle (Poet. 13), ἁμαρτία becomes the famous term of tragic poetics — the "tragic flaw," the error or defect that leads the hero to catastrophe.

The etymological link with TERMσκοπός is the key to Stoic usage: ἁμαρτία is a miss from the σκοπός. If σκοπός is the target at which rational action takes aim, ἁμαρτία is the arrow gone wide. This metaphor makes the term technically precise within the Stoic ethics of action.

The Stoics systematically distinguish:

• ἁμάρτημα — the count noun, a particular fault, a concrete misfired action;
• κακία — a settled state of viciousness, a disposition of the ruling part;
• TERMπάθος — a passionate state out of which a ἁμάρτημα is born;
• ἀδίκημα — a specific kind of ἁμάρτημα: a fault that does injustice to another.

The Stoics maintain a radical thesis: all hamartēmata are equal (πάντα τὰ ἁμαρτήματα ἴσα) — because any miss from the σκοπός is already a miss, and the distance from the mark does not alter the fact of failing to hit it. A paradox that Cicero takes up in Pro Murena and De fin. IV.

Aristot. Poet. 1453a8–10 (the tragic hamartia); SVF III 524–543 (the Stoic doctrine of faults and of their equality); III 528 (definitions); DL VII 120 (the doctrine of the equality of hamartēmata); Stob. Ecl. II 93, 106 W; Cic. Tusc. IV 36; De fin. IV 56–57; Pro Mur. 61. In Marcus: Med. 2.10; 05-25 (another does wrong to me — let him look to it); 06-27; 07-22 (ἁμαρτάνουσι through ignorance and unwillingly); 07-24 (συναίσθησις τοῦ ἁμαρτάνειν — the consciousness of wrongdoing as a condition of living); 07-26 (take the offence apart down to its ὑπόληψις of good and evil); 07-29 (leave another's ἁμαρτηθέν where it arose); 8.51; 09-04 (ὁ ἁμαρτάνων ἑαυτῷ ἁμαρτάνει — the one who errs errs against himself); 09-20 (τὸ ἄλλου ἁμάρτημα ἐκεῖ καταλιπεῖν — leave another's fault "there"); 09-38 (εἰ μὲν ἥμαρτεν, ἐκεῖ τὸ κακόν — and perhaps he did not err); 09-42 (πᾶς ὁ ἁμαρτάνων ἀφαμαρτάνει τοῦ προκειμένου — hence the one gone astray can be "re-taught," not punished); 10.13; 11.18.

In 02-10 hamartēma is the proper subject of the whole passage: "Theophrastus, in his comparison (συγκρίσει) of hamartēmata…" The types of fault are compared by the character of the underlying passion — and this is Theophrastus' rehabilitation of typology within the Stoic context. The remarkable Greek word πλημμελούμενα at the opening — literally "playing out of tune" (from πλήν + μέλος, "outside the melody") — is the metaphor of musical disharmony, symmetrical with the archery metaphor of hamartia. A fault is both a miss from the target and a false note in the common harmony: both images in one sentence.

See TERMskopos — the card for the concept without which hamartia has no meaning: where there is no target, there is nothing to "miss."