There are a number of different stories to be told about why an increasing dissatisfaction with deontology and utilitarianism should have resulted in the revival of virtue ethics( and no way of determining which is the most accurate), but certainly part of any story seems to be that the prevailing literature ignored or sidelined a number of topics that any adequate moral philosophy should address. Two I mentioned above-motives and moral character; others were moral education, moral wisdom or discernment, friendship and family relationship, a deep concept of happiness, the role of the emotions in our moral life, and the questions of what sort of person I should be, and of how we should live. And where do we find these topics discussed? Lo and behold, in Plato and Aristotle.
Now of course, this is not just a coincidence. The modern philosophers whom we think of as having put virtue ethics on the map-Anscombe, Foot, Murdoch, Williams, MacIntyre, McDowell, Nussbaum, Slote -had all absorbed Plato and Aristotle, and in some cases also Aquinas. Their criticisms of 'modern moral philosophy' were no doubt shaped by what they had found insightful in those earlier writers and then found lacking in the modern. But the fact remains that, once they are pointed out, many people, not just those who have read the ancient Greeks, immediately recognize the topics as important ones in moral philosophy.