Panegyric
A formal speech or text in elaborate praise of a person, place, or achievement.
A panegyric is public praise raised to a genre. The Greek panegyrikos meant a speech delivered at a general assembly; in Roman and later European practice it became the set-piece oration honouring an emperor, patron, or city, with conventions as fixed as those of a sonnet.
Its structure is usually predictable: origins and lineage, education, deeds, virtues, comparison with illustrious predecessors, and a closing wish. Readers of panegyric learn to hear the form as much as the claims.
Panegyric differs from a eulogy in that the subject need not be dead, and from flattery in that it is performed openly, in a shared setting, as a civic or ceremonial act.
Common mistake: quoting panegyric as neutral biographical evidence. Its statements are shaped by the occasion; historians treat the emphases as evidence of what an audience valued, not as verified fact.
“Pliny the Younger's Panegyricus, delivered to the emperor Trajan in AD 100.”
Keep reading the glossary
A speech of praise for someone who has died, often the source of widely-quoted lines.
A formal speech or piece of writing in warm praise of a person, thing, or idea.
A formal public speech — the original setting for many of the most-quoted lines in history.
A short formal blessing spoken over an audience, usually at a close.