Panegyrici Latini - Contents

Contents

The collection comprises the following speeches:

1. by Pliny the Younger. It was originally a speech of thanks (gratiarum actio) for the consulship, which he held in 100, and was delivered in the Senate in honour of Emperor Trajan. This work, which is much earlier than the rest of the collection and geographically anomalous, probably served as a model for the other speeches. Pliny was a popular author in the late fourth century—Symmachus modeled his letters on Pliny's, for example—and the whole collection might have been designed as an exemplum in his honor. He later revised and considerably expanded the work, which for this reason is by far the longest of the whole collection. Pliny presents Trajan as the ideal ruler, or optimus princeps, to the reader, and contrasts him with his predecessor Domitian.
2. by Pacatus in honour of Emperor Theodosius I, delivered in Rome in 389.
3. by Claudius Mamertinus in honour of Emperor Julian, delivered in Constantinople in 362, also as a speech of thanks at his assumption of the office of consul of that year.
4. by Nazarius. It was delivered in Rome before the Senate in 321 at the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the accession of Constantine I and the fifth anniversary of his sons Crispus and Constantine II (emperor) becoming caesares. The speech is peculiar because none of the honoured emperors was present at its delivery, and because it celebrates Constantine's victory over Maxentius (at the Battle of Milvian Bridge) in 312, avoiding almost any reference to contemporaneous events.
5. from the year 311, delivered in Trier by an anonymous orator, who gives thanks to Constantine I for a tax relief for his home town Autun.
6. by an anonymous (yet different) author, also delivered at the court in Trier in 310, at the occasion of Constantine's quinquennalia (fifth anniversary of accession) and the founding day of the city of Trier. It contains the description of an appearance of the sun god Apollo to Constantine, which has often been regarded as a model of Constantine's later Christian vision. Also, the speech promulgates the legend that the emperor Claudius II was Constantine's ancestor.
7. by an anonymous author delivered at the wedding of Constantine to Maximian's daughter Fausta in 307, probably also at Trier, and it therefore contains the praise of both emperors and their achievements. The bride and the wedding feature only to a very limited degree in the oration.
8. celebrates the reconquest of Britain by Constantius Chlorus, caesar of the tetrarchy, from Allectus in 296. The speech was probably delivered in 297 in Trier, then the residence of Constantius.
9. is the second speech in the collection where the emperor was not present. It is by Eumenius, teacher of rhetoric at Autun, and is directed at the governor of the province of Gallia Lugdunensis. It was most probably delivered in 297/298, either in Autun or Lyon. Apart from its main subject, the restoration of the school of rhetoric at Autun, it praises the achievements of the emperors of the tetrarchy, especially those of Constantius.
10. from the year 289 (and therefore the earliest of the late antique speeches of the collection), at Trier in honour of Maximian at the occasion of the founding day of the city of Rome. According to a disputed manuscript tradition, the author was a certain Mamertinus, who is identified with the author of the next speech.
11. from 291, also at Trier to Maximian, at the emperor's birthday. It is often attributed to Mamertinus, probably magister memoriae (private secretary) of Maximian, though the manuscript is corrupted and the authorship not entirely certain.
12. by an anonymous orator, delivered in Trier in 313, celebrating (and describing extensively) Constantine's victory over Maxentius in 312. The author of this panegyric makes heavy use of Virgil.