Pliny's Praise: The Panegyicus in the Roman World, by Paul Roche

Review Reviewed Work(s): PLINY'S PRAISE: THE PANEGYRICUS IN THE ROMAN WORLD by P. ROCHE Review by: Eleni Manolaraki Source: The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 102 (2012), pp. 397-398 Published by: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41725045 Accessed: 12-12-2018 16:46 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Roman Studies This content downloaded from 131.247.112.3 on Wed, 12 Dec 2018 16:46:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms REVIEWS 397 In her essay on Silius' narra the difficult task of looking privilege other short referen brief mention in the Ab ur promises to return to the sub Finally, Claire Stocks ('[Re interesting discussion of th Punica. The expedition led b narrative; such miniaturizati as a nouus Hannibal and as a While the reader will find so of the material, argumentat and often insightful ideas h collection of essays. Antony Augoustakis University of Illinois, Urban aaugoust@illinois.edu doi: i o. i o 1 7/S007 543581 20008 1 o P. ROCHE (ED). PLINY'S PRAISE : THE PANEGYRICUS IN THE ROMAN WORLD. Ca University Press: Cambridge, 2011. Pp. x + 208. isbn 9781107009059. £55.oo/US$95.oo This volume, the first ever devoted to Pliny's Panegyric (the commentaries of Durry 1938, M 1949, and Moreno Soldevilla 2010 notwithstanding), examines the historical, rhetorical, p and social contexts of the speech and outlines current critical approaches to it. Th carefully edited as is evident in the helpful cross-references across essays, the order of chap address progressively larger questions, the substantial indices (locorum and general), and absence of typographical errors, and it opens up pathways for future research on this under-appreciated speech. Roche's preface (ix-x) is followed by his 'Pliny's Thanksgiving: an Introduction Panegyricus ' (1-28), which does double duty as introduction to the speech and to the Roche traces the rhetorical precursors of Pliny's gratiarum actio from Pindaric encom Cicero's Caesarian speeches. He also knits together the biographies of Domitian, Trajan, a with those of their biological and adoptive fathers, thus providing ample historical and context for Pliny's self-presentation to Trajan. By stressing the admonitory function of praise (6-10), Roche emphasizes style as a vehicle for imperial ideology. With attention to style, Noreña ('Self-fashioning in the Panegyricus' 29-44) explores th as a tool of Pliny's self-aggrandizement under Trajan. Pliny poses as an experienc administrator, as insider of the imperial court, and even as the emperor's intimate fr revision of his personal and professional career is also effected by his co-opting of a c senatorial perspective through his use of a fluid 'we', his identification with a nebulou senatorial subgroup, and his definition of consular prestige as virtually equivalent if not to imperial authority. In 'The Panegyricus and the Monuments of Rome' (45-66) Roche investigates how Pliny r pre-existing urban projects, especially those of Domitian. The generic parallel between phy rhetorical monuments offers a working metaphor for this transmutation. Physical struc diminished as frail and ephemeral when compared to the metaphorical lasting memorials the emperor's character and his sound policies; other monuments cast off their earlier s semblance and assume their true nature under Trajan; imperial interventions in th Maximus and the Domus Flavia distil Trajan's benevolent transformation of the ca accessibility, and his parity to his subjects. In the first half of 'The Panegyricus and Rhetorical Theory' (67-84) Innes enumerates e topoi (praise of ancestors, of places, of character, of the physical body, of external circum etc.) from Plato and Isocrates to Cicero and Quintilian. In the second, she identifies the of these same categories in the organization and subheadings of the Panegyric. While th illustrates Pliny's firm grounding in rhetorical theory, it shies away from the political func praise: Innes takes at face value Pliny's claim (in Ep. 3.18.2), where he 'denies any advis to himself (83). This content downloaded from 131.247.112.3 on Wed, 12 Dec 2018 16:46:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 398 II. LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE By addressing the utilitarian function of praise in ancient oratory, M reading in 'Ciceronian Praise as a Step towards Pliny's Panegyricus ' (85 is Cicero's tactical and hortatory praise of Pompey in pro lege Manili Marcello , and of Octavian in the Philippics. In all three, Cicero protreptic to commit his laudandi to the civic policies and communal g to motivate them to follow up or to undertake virtuous deeds. The par persuasively even before Manuwald draws them out in her conclusions. Gibson moves the discussion to laudatory literature in Pliny's time ( 104-24). Despite the absence of theoretical discussion on epideictic rhet blame operate 'on the ground', fuelled by the social centrality of prais Tacitus' Dialogus , Agricola and Histories and Frontinus' Aqueduct Kingship Orations provide comparable intersections of eulogy and polit notes that perceived overlaps between Pliny and these authors result common tradition rather than from conscious imitation. But Gibson a and verbal echoes between the Panegyric and imperial praise in Mart which belie Pliny's claim that Trajan's reign breaks cleanly from the empty Hutchinson's 'Politics and the Sublime in the Panegyricus ' (125-41) nature of sublimity in the Panegyricus ' (125). It is hard to gauge the di this essay because the sublime is never clearly defined. Elegant points a size (e.g. Trajan's physical height as 'symbolic elevation', 133) are subjective identifications of 'the sublime' in isolated sentences, as in 52 dedita with no nobis , rises into grandeur, made more sublime by the p Trajan's understated bene facias ' (132). Even incidental remarks, such a mayhem in the city (51.1), are evidence of the sublime: 'the image has but verges on the parody of a military campaign or an earthquak illuminating discussion of the same passage, p. 49). In 'Down the Pan: Historical Exemplarity in the Panegyricus ' (142-74 stream of historical models and anti-models that pervade almost each ch Henderson's distinctive style occasionally obfuscates fairly obvious p name disappears but for its two bows early on, so that insistently vin monster into oblivion can feature extensively as the vituperative flipsid praise', 143), it frequently soars up Pliny's sleight of hand ('if the em vows, they won't play ball' (147), discussing the prescriptive function Several of the exempla detected by Henderson, including Nerva as An (150); Tiberius' patronage of Sejanus echoing Nerva's adoption of T lurking under a digression on the Nile (159-60), open up attractive int of oratory. In 'Afterwords of Praise' (175-88), Rees rectifies a common misconception about the reception of the speech. The position of the Panegyric as the head of the fourth-century anthology known as XII Panegyrici Latini has long encouraged the impression that it constitutes the ultimate model for all subsequent eulogies. Rees, however, shows that the Panegyric is not traceable in these later speeches as their verbal, thematic, or ideological template; the primacy of Pliny's speech in the manuscript is not recognition of its achieved status but an attempt to ensure, by precedent, the respectability of the panegyric project and to showcase by contrast the subsequent panegyrists' original contributions to the genre. University of South Florida Eleni Manolaraki emanolar@usf.edu doi:io.ioi7/Soo7543 5812000822 C. HEUSCH, DIE MACHT DER MEMORIA: DIE ,NOCTES ATTICAE ' DES AUL IM LICHT DER ERINNERUNGSKULTUR DES 2. JAHRHUNDERTS N. CHR. (Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte 104). Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2011. Pp. xiii + 482. isbn 9783110245370 (bound); 9783110245387 (ebook). €119.95. The subject of this book, a light revision of Heusch's Düsseldorf Habilitationsschrift , is Gellius' concern with memoria , a word of frequent occurrence in his work, but also a topic with This content downloaded from 131.247.112.3 on Wed, 12 Dec 2018 16:46:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms