While once dismissed as empty, insincere praise with little historical substance, Roman panegyrics have become the subject of renewed academic interest. Over the last decades, there has been a recognition that panegyrics offer fundamental insights into the functioning of the political culture and rhetoric of the late Roman state.[1] The collection known as XII Panegyrici Latini (henceforth Pan. Lat.) is the only surviving example of a complete corpus of imperial Latin oratory, and the largest collection of Latin oratory after the works of Cicero. This volume by Roger Rees, a leading scholar on panegyric literature, offers the first detailed commentary of the latest text in this collection, Pan. Lat. II (12).[2]
Pan. Lat. II was composed and delivered by a Gallic author, Pacatus Drepanius, in the summer of 389 CE in Rome, in the presence of the emperor Theodosius. The occasion was the emperor’s first visit to Rome, but the panegyric also celebrates Theodosius’ recent victory over Magnus Maximus (r. 383-388), a contender to the imperial throne. Consequently, this speech is a crucial source for understanding civil war, its commemoration, imperial legitimacy, and the complex links between Theodosius, Gaul, and the city of Rome.
Rees’ Commentary builds upon an impressive linguistic, stylistic, and historical expertise. It opens with a solid and thorough introduction, followed by translation with facing Latin text, and extensive commentary. Rees makes a sustained case that Pacatus’ use of intertextuality was not servile or derivative but designed to convey messages to his audience and argues that epideictic oratory deserves to be studied seriously as a literary and rhetorical form.[3]
The book begins with an extensive introduction (pp. 1-110). The first sections focus on the life and career of Pacatus, on Gaul in the late fourth century, and on the occasion of the delivery of the speech; here, Rees contextualises the relationships between the panegyrist, Gaul (the province that had sent Pacatus as their spokesperson to vindicate their cooperation with Magnus Maximus), Rome and Theodosius. The next section addresses the practice of Greco-Roman praise-giving and the functions of panegyrics in the Roman world. It makes reference to the conventions prescribed in treatises on oratory by Menander Rhetor and Quintilian, and in the Rhetorica ad Herennium, as well as the authoritative precedents for panegyrical literature embodied in Cicero and Seneca. This section effectively illustrates the highly codified nature of panegyrics and addresses the issue of reliability by scrutinizing the links between history, panegyric and propaganda.
Section five of the introduction provides an up-to-date status quaestionis regarding the compilation of the XII Panegyrici Latini collection and its intended purpose. Rees plausibly suggests that the panegyrics were edited, compiled and published by Pacatus in late 389 CE. As Rees argues, the swift publication of the collection after the delivery of Pan. Lat. II would have benefited Pacatus’ future political appointments in Africa and Constantinople; it would also have allowed the readers of his speech to appreciate the richness of intertextual allusions to other panegyrics from the collection in Pan. Lat II.
In the following section, Rees focuses on the form, structure, content and style of Pan. Lat. II and how these aspects map onto the conventions of panegyrics presented in section 3. Rees also discusses the much-debated possible traces of the author’s religious affiliation in the speech. He argues that the lack of doctrinal detail in Pan. Lat. II was meant to avoid tension between pagans, Nicene Christians and Arians and that “religion in the speech seems remarkably eclectic, and probably more in the service of praisegiving than of articulating a recognised and coherent theology” (p.72). Finally, Rees provides a list of intertextual allusions in Pan. Lat. II to other speeches in the Panegyrici collection and highlights their significance by analysing the meaning of three such allusions. Sections 7, 8 and 9, respectively, survey the manuscript tradition of Pan. Lat., and the printed editions and translations of Pan. Lat. II.
Rees’ Latin text largely follows Mynors’ edition,[4] although departing from it on some occasions.[5] Manuscript variants are helpfully included in the notes to the Latin text and the commentary expands on Rees’ editorial decisions.
The previous English translation of Pan. Lat. II was published by Nixon in 1987 and used Mynors’ edition. [6] Nixon’s translation kept the sense of the text but did not attempt to reproduce the stylistic aspects of the Latin. Rees’ translation aims “to stay close to the original, to be as consistent as possible in [its] rendering of repeated vocabulary, and to capture some of Pacatus Drepanius’ stylistic ambitions” (110). Rees’ translation is thus considerably closer to the Latin text than Nixon’s, which, for example, tended to cancel out double negatives or translate passive clauses as active ones. Despite closer adherence to the Latin, the translation remains highly readable throughout.
Nixon’s historical commentary on Pan. Lat. II was a useful resource but offered little about the Latin text and its style. Rees’ detailed commentary (191-440) addresses these gaps. The commentary begins by addressing the thematic structure of the speech (e.g., Theodosius’ conduct in office, Maximus in Gaul, …); each thematic section is accompanied by a summary and reference to relevant scholarship. Helpfully, Rees indicates where Pacatus’ Latin differs from the norms of Classical Latin or the conventions of prose panegyric. Rees typically provides an explanation when his translation differs significantly from Nixon’s. There follow bibliography and a useful index locorum.
The book is very well edited[7] and the prose is clear. Rees should be commended for his decision to include translations of quoted Latin passages from texts other than the panegyric: this greatly augments the value and accessibility of his work. At the same time, certain commentary entries referencing or comparing passages from other texts would have benefited from further explanation of their relevance, or why the reader is invited to consult these passages. Similarly, some readers may benefit from further articulation of how the allusions or common terminology identified in the commentary would have conveyed meaning to Pan. Lat. II’s discerning audience, in the same way as Rees develops the meaning of intertextual allusions to other speeches from the Pan. Lat. collection.
In sum, this is a solid and valuable volume, which will undoubtedly become the authoritative, all-in-one reference for all things Pan. Lat. II.
Bibliography
Kelly, Gavin. Ammianus Marcellinus: The Allusive Historian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Mynors, Roger Aubrey Baskerville, ed. XII Panegyrici Latini. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964.
Nixon, Charles Edwin Vandervord. Panegyric to the Emperor Theodosius. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1987.
Nixon, Charles Edwin Vandervord, and Barbara Saylor Rodgers. In Praise of Later Roman Emperors: The Panegyrici Latini. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
Omissi, Adrastos. Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire: Civil War, Panegyric, and the Construction of Legitimacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Omissi, Adrastos, and Alan James Ross, eds. Imperial Panegyric from Diocletian to Honorius. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020.
Notes
[1] Among the recent publications, see Adrastos Omissi, Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire: Civil War, Panegyric, and the Construction of Legitimacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Adrastos Omissi and Alan James Ross, eds., Imperial Panegyric from Diocletian to Honorius (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020).
[2] Pan. Lat. II (12) is the second Latin panegyric in the XII Panegyrici Latini manuscript tradition, but, chronologically, the latest panegyric in the collection, hence the double numbering.
[3] On the importance of analysing intertextual allusions, see Gavin Kelly, Ammianus Marcellinus: The Allusive Historian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 161–221.
[4] Roger Aubrey Baskerville Mynors, ed., XII Panegyrici Latini (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964).
[5] Rees also offers the conjecture quadrata at 35.3.
[6] Charles Edwin Vandervord Nixon, Panegyric to the Emperor Theodosius (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1987). Reprinted in Charles Edwin Vandervord Nixon and Barbara Saylor Rodgers, In Praise of Later Roman Emperors: The Panegyrici Latini. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
[7] Concerning editing and formatting, I only found one issue: a confusing use of bold font in the commentary on p. 431.