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Panegyric and the Discourse of Praise in Late Antiquity

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A.FILIPPO and M.UGENTI (EDS), GIULIANO IMPERATORE: ELOGIO DELL'IMPERATRICE EUSEBIA (Testi e commenti 29). Pisa: Fabrizio Serra, 2016. Pp. 232. isbn9788862279154. €92.00.
C.LAUDANI (ED.), NAZARIO: PANEGIRICO IN ONORE DI COSTANTINO. Bari: Cacucci, 2014. Pp. 463. isbn9788866114055. €45.00.
A.MARANESI, VINCERE LA MEMORIA, COSTRUIRE IL POTERE. COSTANTINO, I RETORI, LA LODE DELL'AUTORITÀ E L'AUTORITÀ DELLA LODE (Diadema 3). Milan: Mimesis, 2016. Pp. 216. isbn9788857533186. €20.00.

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2019

Catherine Ware
Catherine Ware*
Affiliation:
University College Cork
*
Catherine.Ware@ucc.ie
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Extract

Although a panegyric can be defined very simply as a speech of praise, it is no longer assumed that praise is also its sole function. What that function might be, however, continues to preoccupy scholarship. Generalisations can be made, but even a nuanced judgement such as ‘every encomium is at once a literary work, a moral problem, and a social rite’ (Pernot, Epideictic Rhetoric, ix) can be challenged by the particular: ‘there is no system and there never was. There is circumstance, preference and ambiguity’. The question is further complicated by the evolution of a rhetoric of praise, related to but independent of the formal panegyric, which came to characterise the literature of Late Antiquity and beyond. The questions, therefore, of what a panegyric is and what it is for are highly relevant to modern scholarship, not only to commentaries but, as is apparent from the books under review, to studies of rhetoric, late antique historiography and the creation of the imperial image.

Type
Review Articles
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 109 , November 2019 , pp. 291 - 304
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2019. Published by The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies 

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Footnotes

Eulogy: Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

As the different authors under discussion use different systems in referring to the Pan. Lat., I have standardised all references here according to the system of Mynors’ OCT.

References

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