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HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY
The Panegyricus ('Panegyric') 1 is the only complete Latin oration which
survives from the first two centuries of our era. For that reason, if no other, it
possesses considerable literary interest. Again, it throws some light upon a
period otherwise poorly documented (A.D. 96-100), as upon several wider
areas of social and political history. Nevertheless it has fallen, not undeservedly,
into almost universal contempt. Pliny would have been wiser if
he had not expanded and developed the more simple version actually delivered
in the Senate (Epist. 3.18.1).
There is no earlier speech with which the Panegyricus is closely comparable,
but it owes a good deal, particularly in style, to Cicero's Pro Marcello. Pliny
describes and extols Trajan's virtues, denigrates Domitian, and, like Seneca
in his De dementia, sets forth certain ideals of princely conduct (cf. Epist.
3.18.3). He had a delicate task, and on some topics, military and dynastic,
he has to be extremely circumspect. When he affects outspoken independence
or blends banter with praise (e.g. 59.3—6), one recalls Tacitus' sour words
ea sola species adulandi supererat ' that was the only brand of adulation as yet
untried'. No doubt Trajan merited acclaim as the best of emperors, but Pliny
spoils his case by enthusing interminably over trivialities and by his obsession
with Domitian, with whom Trajan is repeatedly contrasted. It is after all an
odd form of eulogy to reiterate that a man is not a profligate, not a sadist, not
a megalomaniac, and indeed Pliny apologizes for these comparisons at 53.1—3,
not altogether convincingly. At first sight the Panegyricus may seem exuberantly
optimistic, but occasionally a thread of deep gloom shows through. Bad
emperors may return (see e.g. 88.9), and what the Senate has suffered in the
past it may suffer again. Pliny's outlook is not utterly different from Tacitus',
whom he sometimes imitated or prompted to imitation. But a ceremonial
occasion imposed restrictions over and above those which inhibited freedom
of speech generally: the most interesting matters in the Panegyricus are to be
read between the lines.
The speech is couched in the grand style, being elaborately expansive,
patterned in phrase and clause, and full of florid conceits and rhetorical artifice
of every kind. The lucidity which distinguishes the letters is here liable to
eclipse. And, while the antitheses and epigrams which Pliny readily excogitated
are often as wearisome as they are vacuous (see e.g. 61.4, 62.9, 67.3, 84.5), it is
probably his woolly repetitiveness, rather than misplaced ingenuity, 'which in
the end reduces most readers to despair. He himself wonders (Epist. 3.18.10)
whether more sober treatment might have been preferable, but plainly he
remained in love with his own vices.
1
This title may not be original. PtxEpist. 3.13.1 and 18.1 Pliny talks ofgratiarum actio,' expression
of thanks*, but that is not necessarily his title either.
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