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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Panegyric
Roger Rees
In quantitative terms, surviving late antique imperial panegyric can be charted as follows: In late antique Greek the major panegyrical works in prose are the Vita Constanini (Cameron and Hall 1999) and Laus Constantini (Drake 1976) by Eusebius; Orations 1–3 by Julian; various speeches by Libanius, notably Or. 12, 13, 59 (Wiemer 1995; Van Hoof 2014); Or. 1–19, 34 by Themistius (Vanderspoel 1995; Hägg and Rousseau 2000; Heather and Moncur 2001); and late antique Greek verse panegyrics that are almost completely lost (Cameron 1965, p. 471; 1970, p. 254). In late antique Latin, the major panegyrical works in prose are the XII Panegyrici Latini (PanLat) collection (Nixon and Saylor Rodgers 1994; Rees 2012a); Or. 1–3 by Symmachus, now fragmentary (Pabst 1989; Callu 2009); Ausonius’s consular gratiarum actio (Green 1991); and Ennodius’s panegyric to Theodoric (MacCormack 1975). In verse the key texts are the hexameter panegyrics by Claudian (Cameron 1970; Ware 2012), Sidonius Apollinaris, Merobaudes, Priscian, and Corippus (Schindler 2009; Gillett 2012). We also have references to other panegyrical works now lost, such as, among many others, Fronto’s consular gratiarum actio (1.110 Haines); a speech to the emperor Gallienus (Pernot 2015, p. 16); speeches that preceded Libanius’s to Julian in 363 (Autobiog. 128 – see below); Libanius’s to Gallus (Autobiog. 91, 97), to the prefect Strategios (Autobiog. 111–112), and to Valens (only half of which was delivered – Autobiog. 144); Symmachus’s speech to the usurper Magnus Maximus in 388 (Ep. 2.31 postscript; Sogno 2006, pp. 70–73; Rees 2010, pp. 20–21); Augustine’s rather vague mention of his preparation to deliver a panegyric (Conf. 6.6.9); various references to Greek works in Philostratus’s Lives of the Sophists and to Greek verse panegyrics by poets such as Theotimus and Diphilus (Cameron 1965, pp. 477–478); a speech an orator was putting aside for later (PanLat XI[3]1.3); and Eusebius’s reference to other speeches delivered in praise of Constantine on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of his accession (LC 1.1; Burgess 1902; MacCormack 1981, p. 9; Pernot 2015, p. 19). The loss of some of these speeches, such as Symmachus’s to Maximus, was no doubt deliberate; the reverse scenario, such as when Libanius denied having addressed a panegyric to the usurper Procopius (Autobiog. 163–165), could also come about. Political reputations could be won and lost by addressing – or not addressing – a panegyric.
This record of survival and loss tells us that panegyric was a popular late antique form in both Greek and Latin, in prose and verse, and in Christian and pagan contexts. In addition, not from references but from extrapolation from the surviving material, we can reasonably surmise a great deal more that has not reached us; an anonymous orator of 307, speaking at an imperial wedding, says that imperial benefactions to the state can be praised on “many occasions of different times” (PanLat VII[6]1.2 multis occasionibus diversorum temporum). From the speeches of thanksgiving for the consulship by Claudius Mamertinus (PanLat III[11]) and Ausonius, for example, we can confidently assume that every year each new consulship was marked with a panegyric, continuing a tradition that went back to the earlier empire. If, alternatively, the emperor himself was consul, it seems he would hear panegyrics to celebrate that (Libanius Or. 12; Claudian PanIIICon, PanIVCon, PanVICon; Dewar 1996).
Perhaps with a little less conviction but, nonetheless, a degree of confidence, from the evidence of PanLat X(2) delivered in Trier in 289 on the occasion of Rome’s birthday (21 April), we can imagine that such celebrations took place every spring in many or most cities, at least in the western empire. Other annual occasions can be factored in, such as imperial birthdays (PanLat XI[3]), and other “occasional” celebrations such as imperial victories (PanLat VIII[4], XII[9], IV[10]), marriages (PanLat VII[6]), and accession anniversaries (PanLat IV[10], Themistius Or. 15, Eusebius Laus Constantini). Many late antique emperors were notably itinerant, and the tradition came into being of each new town on his travels receiving him with an adventus speech, such as Aelius Aristides Or. 17 and 21 and Libanius Or. 13. We also know that in certain cases the absence of the addressee/laudandus was not a serious obstacle to the delivery of a panegyric. These include the Dyarchic and Tetrarchic speeches that were not delivered before the full imperial college but address it directly nonetheless (Rees 2002, pp. 12–19); an address by Nazarius to Constantine in his absence (PanLat IV[10]3.1); Themistius Or. 6, which is addressed to the brothers Valens and V
alentinian, although Valentinian was not present; Libanius Or. 59, addressed to Constantius and Constans although Constans was not present; and Themistius’s speech of 363, addressed to Julian who was in Antioch (Watts 2015, pp. 117–118). Panegyric is not limited exclusively to praise of the emperor – the ancient evidence attests regular rhetorical praise of other dignitaries, such as Strategios, of gods, places, and concepts – but imperial panegyric is well represented in our late antique sources and was clearly a recognized form (Burgess 1902; Pernot 2015).
That such panegyrics were delivered in great number finds further confirmation in the survival from late antiquity of educational resources designed specifically to offer instruction in rhetorical composition, particularly in epideictic (“display”), which since classical Greek times was considered the third (and least significant) subdivision of rhetorical type, after forensic and deliberative (see Chapter 12 in this volume.) Epideictic is itself subdivided into praise and blame. In popular perception, ancient and modern, where forensic rhetoric was a due part of judicial culture and deliberative rhetoric drove good political practice, epideictic rhetoric was of and for itself. Surviving instruction in it from late antiquity includes the progymnasmata of Libanius, who was professor of rhetoric in Antioch, and texts by Theon, Hermogenes, Aphthonius, and Nicolaos (Pernot 1993, 2015; Gibson 2008).
The most instructive text for appreciation of imperial panegyric, however, is the Basilikos Logos treatise of Menander Rhetor, the only surviving ancient text to offer specific advice on the subject matter for a panegyric to the emperor; the text is organized chronologically starting from the honorand subject’s birth and childhood, then thematically, based on his virtues in war and peace. This Greek treatise dates to the late third century (Russell and Wilson 1981). If the origins and distribution of the work remain matters for speculation, nonetheless it attests an appetite – a societal need – for instruction in epideictic oratory, which can in turn be understood as an index of the high frequency of panegyrical speeches in late antiquity. In sum, we have a substantial corpus of panegyrical literature from late antiquity, but we can be sure it represents only a fraction of what there once was. This survival record is probably best attributed to Sabine MacCormack’s often quoted characterization of panegyric’s “in‐built obsolescence” (1975, p. 159); according to this, once delivered, a typical panegyric had discharged its primary function and had no realistic claim to a longer shelf life. In turn, it follows from this that the panegyrics that have survived are, by definition, exceptional – Donald Russell makes the point that apart from some of the Panegyrici Latini collection, the speeches we have are by known men of letters, who saw to the publication and distribution of their work themselves (1998, p. 17). For example, although the speeches themselves do not survive, various references in the letters of Fronto attest the preservation in the Acts of the Senate in Rome of consular gratiarum actiones, available for consultation and enjoyment in future decades (1.p.110, 126–128 Haines; Rees 2011, pp. 175–176). So, too, in his Or. 12.2, Libanius, apparently casually, speaks of his present and later audience – in the latter case, a readership (see also Libanius Ep. 818; Pliny Pan. 4.1; PanLat II[12]47.6).
Generally, it is difficult to identify post‐delivery revisions in panegyrics, and the academic orthodoxy, perhaps a little too easily accepted, is to assume they survive as delivered (Nixon 1983). The most notable and certain exception is Pliny’s Panegyricus, a revised and elaborated version of the speech he gave (Ep. 3.13 and 18; Roche 2011). Libanius has a revealing anecdote about how the Praetorian Prefect Strategios commissioned 10 copyists to help broaden the readership of a panegyric Libanius had delivered in his honor: Libanius’s rival Acacius bribed one of the copyists to make suitable changes and additions to the speech, to his own [Acacius’s] advantage; this information was leaked, and Acacius was sentenced to a punishment (although in the end he was spared) (Autobiog. 112–114). A persuasive case has recently been made that after its original delivery at Rome, Themistius published a significantly revised version of his Or. 3 (Vanderspoel 2012). But even in the case of that speech, the orator took care to convey in the written version classical oratory’s standard impression of a “live” transcript.
Precursors to late antique Latin panegyric are easily identified: To start with prose, Cicero’s Pro lege Manilia and his Caesarian speeches were important protopanegyrics; so, too, Seneca’s De Clementia (Morton Braund 1998; 2009); Pliny’s Panegyricus of 100 CE, his only oratory to survive, later to be anthologized at the head of the Panegyrici Latini was a watershed publication (Roche 2011); and in Latin verse, among other possibilities, we can point to the Panegyricus Messallae, Laus Pisonis, Horace Odes IV, Martial books 8 and 9, and Statius Silvae (1.1, 1.6, 4.1, 2, 3) (Rees 2012b). Much earlier, the Greeks had pioneered epideictic rhetoric, in the epitaphios logos (“funeral speech”) tradition (Loraux 1986) and in accounts of near‐contemporary individuals, such as in Isocrates’s Evagoras and Xenophon’s Agesilaus; Greek verse praise included epinician lyric through to Theocritus’s Idylls. In the Second Sophistic, Greek epideictic oratory flourished, as it was systematically taught in schools of rhetoric (Pernot 1993).
In sum, although late antique political culture was an environment in which panegyric could prosper, it would be wrong to see it as an exclusively late literary form. If there was not a bigger empire in the later third century than there had been before, there were at least more urban populations, including provincial capitals, more schools of rhetoric, and, during some administrations at least, more emperors; also there were more occasions on which panegyrics were an appropriate part of the ceremonial. A brief comparison between the fasti of the Republican period and the calendar of Philocalus from the mid‐fourth century bears this out – by late antiquity the rhythms of urban society were largely dictated by occasions relating to the imperial family. When in 100 CE Pliny said that part of the challenge he faced in addressing a speech to Trajan was that the tradition of oratorical praise‐giving was already tired and suspect (Ep. 3.13.2), it seems that he was essentially referring to the practice of consular gratiarum actiones. No doubt there were exceptions, but it seems that Pliny was working within a norm where oratorical praise‐giving was most closely identified with the hardy perennial of a consul’s speech. By late antiquity, the panegyrical calendar would have been busier – and, of course, not simply in Rome.
A composite picture of the circumstances in which a typical prose panegyric was delivered in late antiquity possibly risks capturing the particular context of none, but it might give a worthwhile sense of the major features: a town hall, forum, theater, or basilica in a provincial city; a crowd consisting of the local political class, including town councillors and office‐bearers from the provincial government; the emperor, perhaps, or his representative; if the emperor was present, his bodyguard and other military personnel, plus a retinue of courtiers; and the orator, sometimes only one of several waiting his turn to deliver a speech, in which he would trace the contours of accepted oratorical practice that he had learned from his time as a student in a school of rhetoric and, perhaps, now even taught himself as a professor. An orator speaking in Trier in 311 details the pressure he felt in such a context (PanLat V[8]9.3). In Greek centers, it seems there was often a competitive (agonistic) element to the performance of speeches, with each orator trying to outdo his fellows: Libanius explains how orators could earn money, reputation, and career advancements by success in competition (Autobiog. 37–42; Pernot 2015, pp. 14–15). Just as an orator might weave a personal petition into a speech that essentially articulated the loyalty and ambition of his city, so, too, in a competitive environment in particular, he might risk some stylistic adventure to help his work linger longer in the audience’s memory than might otherwise be the case. If this scenario and its many variations were being played out in a range of provincial cities, late antique panegyrics must have, indeed, been generated in great quantities.
It seems likely, then, that late antiq
uity was richer in Greek and Latin panegyric than earlier periods were. The Aristotelean rhetorical taxonomy, which had epideictic oratory (that is, the rhetoric of praise and blame) as a distant third behind the giants of forensic and deliberative oratory, continued to be reprised by Greek and Latin theorists, but, in fact, by late antiquity the balance had altered. Laurent Pernot has recently observed that “the epideictic genus, which started as rhetoric’s poor relation, became under the Roman Empire its most esteemed and prominent” (Pernot 2015, pp. 9–10). Given the survival record, it is difficult to evaluate with any precision the proportion of late antique epideictic oratory relative to its forensic and deliberative counterparts, but its rise seems to have coincided with their corresponding demise. Pernot attributes this development to the consolidation over time of a society with an emperor at its heart, to the increasingly aristocratic character of urban centers (where panegyric was performed), and to the spread of a formal education system that promoted epideictic rhetoric. We might also note that a good deal of surviving panegyric from late antiquity resists tidy classification as purely “epideictic.” In fact, many speeches clearly fulfil a practical political function. Some might request tax breaks from the emperor, or his munificence toward the city, or his ongoing commitment to military resources in the region. Certain orators, meanwhile, used the opportunity to phrase a more personal request, such as career positions for themselves or their family. This ambassadorial or probouleutic function invested panegyric with a more meaningful communicative capacity than the ancient textbooks suggest (Hostein 2012). And this communication could work the other way too: As well as this “communication ascendante,” by which an orator used the vehicle of panegyric to inform or petition the emperor, Guy Sabbah noted the form’s “communication descendante,” by which an orator could be primed by the imperial court to include information for the benefit of the citizen audience (Sabbah 1984; Ando 2000, pp. 126–128). The most conspicuous example of this is the announcement in the panegyric of 310 (PanLat VI[7]2.2) that Constantine’s ancestry went back to Claudius Gothicus II – such a claim must surely have had the backing of the court, or even have been their initiative. By late antiquity, panegyrics – greater in number than before – could serve many functions at the same time.
