Panegyrici Latini - Language and Style

Language and Style

The Latin of the panegyrics is that of a Golden Age Latin base, derived from an education heavy on Cicero, mixed with a large number of Silver Age usages and a small number of Late and Vulgar terms. To students of Latin in Late Antiquity, Cicero and Virgil represented the paragons of the language; as such, the panegyrists made frequent use of them. Virgil's Aeneid is the favorite source, the Georgics the second favorite, and the Eclogues a distant third. (Other poets are much less popular: there are infrequent allusions to Horace, and one complete borrowing from Ovid.) When drawing from Cicero's body of work, the panegyrists looked first to those works where he expressed admiration and contempt. As a source of praise, Cicero's panegyric of Pompey in support of the Manilian law (De Imperio Cn. Pompei) was quite popular. It is echoed thirty-six times in the collection, across nine or ten of the eleven late panegyrics. Cicero's three orations in honor of Julius Caesar were also useful. Of these, the panegyrists were especially fond of the Pro Marcello; across eight panegyrics there are more than twelve allusions to the work. For vilification, the Catiline and Verine orations were the prominent sources (there are eleven citations to the former and eight to the latter work).

Other classic prose models had less influence on the panegyrics. Pliny's Panegyricus model is familiar to the authors of panegyrics 5, 6, 7, 11, and especially 10, in which there are several verbal likenesses. Sallust's Bellum Catilinae is echoed in the panegyrics 10 and 12, and his Jugurthine War in 6, 5, and 12. Livy seems to have been of some use in panegyric 12 and 8. The panegyrist of 8 must have been familiar with Fronto, whose praise of Marcus Aurelius he mentions, and the panegyrist of 6 seems to have known Tacitus' Agricola. The Aeduan orators, who refer to Julius Caesar in the context of Gaul and Britain, are either directly familiar with his prose or know of his figure through intermediaries like Florus, the historian. Panegyric 12, meanwhile, contains a direct allusion to Caesar's Bellum civile.

Accentual and metrical clausulae were used by all the Gallic panegyrists. All of the panegyrists, save Eumenius, used both forms at a rate of about 75 percent or better (Eumenius used the former 67.8 percent of the time, and the latter 72.4 percent). This was a common metrical rhythm at the time, but had gone out of style by the fifth century, when metrical considerations no longer mattered.