PANEGYRIC  , strictly a formal public speech delivered in high praise of a

person or thing, and generally high studied or undiscriminating eulogy . It is derived from 7raeflyvpiKes (a speech) " fit for a general assembly " (7ravtityvpts, panegyris) . In Athens such speeches were delivered at national festivals or games, with the object of rousing the citizens to emulate the glorious deeds gf their ancestors . The most famous are the Olympiacus of Gorgias, the Olympiacus of Lysias, and the Panegyricus and Panathenaicus (neither of them, however, actually delivered) of Isocrates . Funeral orations, such as the famous speech put into the mouth of Pericles by Thucydides, also partook of the nature of panegyrics . The Romans confined the panegyric to the living, and reserved the funeral oration exclusively for the dead . The most celebrated example of a Latin panegyric (panegyricus) is that delivered by the younger Pliny (A.D. zoo) in the senate on the occasion of his assumption of the consulship, containing a somewhat fulsome eulogy of Trajan . Towards the end of the 3rd and during the 4th century, as a result of the orientalizing of the Imperial court by Diocletian, it became customary to celebrate as a matter of course the superhuman virtues and achievements of the reigning emperor . Twelve speeches of the kind (Pliny's included), eight of them by famous Gallic rhetoricians (Claudius Mamertinus, Eumenius, Nazarius, Drepanius Pacatus) and three of anonymous author-ship, have been collected under the title of Panegyrici veteres latini (ed . E . Bahrens, 1874) . Speaking generally, they are characterized by a stilted, affected style and a tone of gross adulation .

There are extant similar orations by

Ausonius, six or seven strings, one played by a Moor; both have the tail-piece in the form of a crescent . 6 See Hammer von Purgstall on the " Seven Seas," in Jahrbiicher der Literatur, xxxvi . 290 (Vienna, 1826) . 3 Syntagma musicum (Wolfenbuttel, 1618), pl. xvii. and ch . 28, 63; reprint in Publik. d . Ges. f . Musikforschung (Berlin, 1884), Jahrgang XII . See Dr F . J . Furnivall's edition of Captain Cox or Robert Lane-ham's letter, Ballad Society (London, 1871), p . 67 . 3 See Gabinetto armonico, ch .

49, pl . 97 (

Rome, 1722) . Symmachus and Ennodius, and panegyrics in verse by Claudian, Merobaudes, Priscian, Corippus and others . See C . G . Heyne, " Censura xii. panegyricorum veterum," in his Opuscula academica (1812), vi . 8o-118; H . Rihl, De xii panegyricis latinis (progr . Greifswald, 1868) ; R . Pichin, Les Derniers ecrivains profanes (Paris, 1906) .