Pliny's thanksgiving
An introduction to the Panegyricus
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23149366 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Paul Roche (0009-0007-3825-2974, The University of Sydney, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Pages | 1-28 |
| Publication date | 2011-05-26 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Pliny's Praise (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1017/cbo9780511920578.002 |
| OpenAlex | W2498922566 |
| ISBN | 9780511920578 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
On 1 September 100 ce, Pliny the Younger rose in the senate to deliver the oration we know as the Panegyricus. This was a gratiarum actio, a 'vote of thanks', offered up to the emperor Trajan (98–117). It was given on the occasion of Pliny's attainment of the consulship, the prime goal of regular senatorial ambition and the highest rung, albeit of suffect status, on the normal cursus honorum. Pliny claims as the pretext for his speech a senatus consultum which had recommended that a vote of thanks be rendered to the emperor by the consuls (Pan. 4.1, cf. 90.3; Ep. 3.18.1, 6.27.1). In the speech and in his letters, Pliny immediately subjoins to this recommendation a normative aim: to demonstrate through praise the behaviour and characteristics expected of a good princeps (Pan. 4.1; Ep. 3.18.2). In offering praise to his emperor on this occasion, Pliny was participating in a vibrant rhetorical tradition. Its tropes and themes reflect a vital and continuous contemporary culture, while its roots extended a very long way back into republican culture and politics on the one hand, and on the other into Greek traditions of praise which had been crystallized to a certain extent by Isocrates in the mid-fourth century bce, but had predated him considerably.
Art · Historical and Literary Analyses · History · Linguistics and language evolution · Medieval European Literature and History · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,25 |
| Citation span | 2014 - 2020 (7) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |