Pliny's Praise: The Panegyicus in the Roman World, by Paul Roche

MAIA, 2019

This article offers a close reading of chapters 82-88 of Pliny’s Panegyricus. It examines the ways in which the literary texture and techniques of the Panegyricus reflect and shape the social and political climate of the Trajanic age. it is suggested that Pliny’s portrait of Trajan’s otium connects to the contemporary discourse of the recovery of the body politic after Domitian’s tyranny, as well as to Pliny’s own literary career. This paper also discusses how Pliny presents Trajan’s wife and sister, Pompeia Plotina and Ulpia Marciana, as models for how subjects should imitate the emperor, the supreme exemplar.

Chapter 7, “Reading Pliny’s Panegyricus Within the Context of Late Antiquity and the Early Modern Period” by William J. Dominik, maintains that the reception of Pliny’s Panegyricus by writers of late antiquity and the early modern period not only demonstrates its critical, even seminal, role in the history of the genre of panegyric but also serves to illustrate the potential functions of the Panegyricus’s own narrative. The reception of Pliny’s Panegyricus reflects its formative role in the development of panegyric in late antiquity, as reflected in the Panegyrici Latini, and in the early modern periiod, as shown in the panegyrics of such writers as Erasmus and Dryden. Pliny’s Panegyricus seems to accord generally with the practice of imperial panegyric. As Dominik notes, the necessity of flattering emperors such as Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, and Nero for fear of the consequences is well attested, for example, in Tacitus, whose comments on the use of praise during the empire are especially instructive for reading the Panegyricus. Dominik points out how other strategies available for reading Pliny’s Panegyricus are based upon the various functions of epideictic in the social, political, and literary contexts of the Greek and Roman worlds. One hitherto neglected approach to the reading of Pliny’s Panegyricus is the way in which manifestations of panegyric during late antiquity and the Renaissance suggest further possible functions of the Panegyricus’s narrative. Although the function of the Panegyricus is indisputably laudatory on the surface, Dominik argues that later reiterations of panegyric suggest other functions that can be applied to its narrative: ceremonial and celebratory; authorially self-positioning and self-positioning; exhortative and admonitory; and potentially admonishing and critical.

Arethusa 46.2 (2013) 289-312

In this article, it is investigated in how far Pliny’s Panegyricus to Trajan serves as a model for the panegyrical lives in the Historia Augusta (notably the vitae Claudii, Aureliani, Taciti and Probi). There are several similar strategies in praising the emperors, not encountered in other texts of the same type, such as the panegyrici latini XII. The most telling example is the use of the contrast between good and bad emperors. The conclusion is drawn that the author of the HA may well have used Pliny as his model, which is peculiar, as this might throw new light on the much discussed beginning point of the HA with the vita Hadriani (not to speak of the ending, just before the time of the panegyrici). The article is part of a collection of papers tracing the presence of Pliny in Late Antiquity.

When reading a work of Flavian literature in Latin, a scholar can be forgiven for thinking in places that one is actually reading an Augustan literary work, so pervasive and striking are the intertextual allusions. Marks and Mogetta make precisely this point in their introduction, going so far as to assert that the Flavians' usage of the Augustan past constitutes a 'veritable Augustan renaissance' (p. 1). The editors argue (pp. 2-4) that the reign of Domitian (81-96 CE), as evident in his building and cultural programmes, was marked by a remarkable expansion of the legacy of Augustus in comparison with his predecessors Vespasian (reigned 69-79) and Titus (ruled 69-71). The focus of Domitian upon the Augustan legacy, in turn, was rivalled by poets and prose writers of his reign in their use of Augustan literary models (pp. 4-7). The scholarly recognition of the Flavian use of Augustan literary works is a reflection of the development in recent decades of the use of intertextuality to explore the Graeco-Roman literary tradition. This edited volume differs in two important aspects from other recent collections on the topic of Flavian intertextuality. First, it is the first to set out specifically to explore the reception of the Augustan age in its various facets during the Domitianic era; secondly, though curiously the word 'intertext' or its variants are not mentioned in the introduction, the collection as a whole extends the concept of intertextuality from the mere literary to include a host of other 'intertextualities' such as artistic, archaeological, architectural, iconographical, historical, linguistic and rhetorical. The innovative and sophisticated discussions in the volume are successful in evincing the complex, sometimes ambivalent, legacy of the Augustan age in a broad range of material, cultural and literary areas (sometimes discussed together). The theme of Parts 1 and 4 is space, in the former in a topographical sense and in the latter from a poetic perspective. Part 1, 'Urban Narratives', explores the Domitianic building and restoration programme that incorporated Augustan features and became an enduring part of the urban landscape of Rome. The three contributors to the treatment of 'urban narratives' draw attention to the ambivalent aspect of Domitian's use of the Augustan legacy. In the opening chapter D. Conlin explains how Domitian's building programmes in the Campus Martius and the Forum Romanum reflect Domitian's desire not only to emulate Augustus but also to control and surpass the legacy of his predecessor. Domitian's alignment and concomitant rivalry with Augustus and his age is further suggested in M. Goldman-Petri's discussion of Domitian's construction of templa reminiscent of Augustan arae. D. Noceras contends that Statius' attitude in Silvae 1.1 towards the monumental equestrian statue of Domitian in the Roman Forum confirms the lack of a positive correspondence between the statue and any proximate Augustan monument; this reading potentially lends credence to an anti-Domitianic interpretation of Silvae 1.1 (e.g. F. Ahl, ANRW II 32.1 [1984]). The three chapters in Part 4, 'Poetic Journeys', that deal with the theme of space in poetry each examine the reception of an Augustan text by a Domitianic poet. E. Scioli compares Statius' house of Sleep in Thebaid 10 with Ovid's in Metamorphoses 11 and argues that the former's description creates both a feeling of familiarity in a new poetic context and a sense of 'belatedness' in regard to its Augustan source. C. Schroer maintains that Silius Italicus inverts Virgil's model of Aeneas' 'victorious exile' in the Aeneid and

i. what meaning does the word "subversion" carry under the principate, a regime that itself may be seen as constituted in and through subversion, that arose from what theodor mommsen called an "empire in permanent revolution" and what Carl schmitt described as a "state of emergency," that rests its claim to legitimacy on the radical deformation of republican institutions like the tribunate and the consulship? I will approach this question from the perspective provided by the younger pliny in his Panegyricus, a speech in praise of the emperor trajan originally delivered in the autumn of 00 Ce on the occasion of pliny's taking up the suffect consulship, and later circulated by pliny in written form (epist. III 3; 8).

Arethusa 46.2, Spring 2013, pp. 195-216

The purpose of this paper is to offer a preliminary response to the political influence of Pliny’s Panegyricus in the Panegyrici Latini, focussing on passages that contain echoes stricto sensu of Pliny on political matters, so as to refine understanding of the rhetorical function of Pliny’s Panegyricus in the corpus as a whole. The line of argument follows a chronological order: the panegyric orations from the period 289–321 comprise a set in which the influence of Pliny is relatively minor, whereas Pliny’s text has a significant bearing on the conceptual and expressive dimensions of the speeches delivered in 362 and 389.