Panegyrici Latini - Background

Background

Gaul had a long history as a center of rhetoric. It maintained its dominance of the field well into the fourth century. An early lead in the field was taken by the Aedui, early allies of Rome and eager to assimilate to the ways of their new rulers: Maenian schools were celebrated as early as the reign of Tiberius (r. 14–37 CE). They continued to flourish into the days of Eumenius' grandfather, but were closed by the mid-third century. There was some revival in the city in the late-third century, but after the establishment of Trier as an imperial capital in the 280s, the orators began feeling jealousy for the imperial patronage enjoyed by the citizens of Trier. Despite the political and economic hegemony of the city, however, Trier failed to make any significant mark on the rhetoric of the period. Nixon and Rodgers suggest that it was simply too close to the imperial court. The surviving evidence (which might be prejudiced by Ausonius' Professors of Bordeaux) points to a shift from Autun and Trier as centers of the art in the Tetrarchic and Constantinian period, moving to Bordeaux later in the fourth century.

The panegyrics evince a familiarity with prior handbooks of rhetoric. Some have argued that Menander of Laodicea's treatises were particularly influential on the collection, and believed his precepts were used in the tenth panegyric. However, because so much of Menander's advice consisted of standard rhetorical procedure, the parallels adduced in favor of Menander as a model are insufficient to prove his direct use by the panegyrists. Other handbooks of rhetoric might also have had influence on the collection. Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria, for example, treats the subject of an oration's ancestry, parentage, and country in a manner similar to the panegyrics of 289, 291, 297, 310, 311, 321, and 389. In any case, the other panegyrics in the collection vary widely from Menander's schema. Parallels with other Latin orators, like Cicero and Pliny the Younger, are less frequent than they would have been if those authors had served as stylistic models.