Themes
The panegyrics exemplify the culture of imperial praesentia, or "presence", also encapsulated in the imperial ceremony of adventus, or "arrival". The panegyrics held it as a matter of fact that the appearance of an emperor was directly responsible for bringing security and beneficence. The orators held this visible presence in tension with another, more abstract notion of the timeless, omnipresent, ideal emperor. The panegyrist of 291 remarked that the meeting between Diocletian and Maximian over the winter of 290/91 was like the meeting of two deities; had the emperors ascended the Alps together, their bright glow would have illuminated all of Italy. Panegyrics came to form part of the vocabulary through which citizens could discuss notions of "authority". Indeed, because panegyrics and public ceremony were such a prominent part of imperial display, they, and not the emperor's more substantiative legislative or military achievements, became the emperor's "vital essence" in the public eye.
Read more about this topic: Panegyrici Latini
Famous quotes containing the word themes:
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shiite fundamentalists.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)