Self-fashioning in the Panegyricus

Abstract

Implicit in any formal speech in praise of a ruler is the putative authority of the speaker. To extol the ruler's background and lineage properly, to characterize his virtues in appropriate terms, to celebrate his accomplishments in convincing detail and to place them in the most impressive contexts – to offer a public verdict, in a word, on the legitimacy of the ruler's power – is not for everyone to do, and indeed stands as an ambitious assertion of one's own knowledge about, and capacity for judgement on, complex matters of state and high politics. And so it was with Pliny's gratiarum actio . By delivering a speech that pronounces on everything from the deeper meaning of Trajan's adoption by Nerva and the legacies of Domitian's reign to the fiscal impact of the emperor's policy on inheritances and the current state of senatorial opinion on this or that issue, Pliny leaves little doubt that he is both close to the centre of power and well qualified to assess it. That the original speech was given on the occasion of his accession to a suffect consulship (100 ce ) only underlines this impression. He goes even further, however, systematically (and often superfluously) displaying ‘insider’ knowledge, characterizing the nature of political authority in imperial Rome to his own advantage, and reciting a number of carefully chosen chapters from his own biography.

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