Panegyric

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Panegyric

A panegyric is a formal public speech, or (in later use) written verse, delivered in high praise of a person

Person

The term person in common usage means an individual human being. In the fields of law, philosophy, medicine, and others, the term also has specialised context-specific meanings....
or thing

Object (philosophy)

In philosophy, an object is a thing, an entity, or a being. This may be taken in several senses.In its weakest sense, the word object is the most all-purpose of nouns, and can replace a noun in any sentence at all....
, a generally highly studied and discriminating eulogy

Eulogy

A eulogy is a Speech or writing in praise of a person or thing, especially one recently deceased or retired. The word is derived from the Greek word e?????a , meaning praise ....
, not expected to be critical. It is derived from Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
meaning a speech "fit for a general assembly" (panegyris
Panegyris

A panegyris , is an Ancient Greece religious assembly. Each was dedicated to the worship of a particular Greek god.It is also associated with saint days and holy festivals....
). In Athens

Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
such speeches were delivered at national festival

Festival

A festival is an event, usually and ordinarily staged by a local community, which centers on some unique aspect of that community.Among many religions, a feast or festival is a set of celebrations in honour of God or Polytheism....
s or game

Game

A game is a structured wiktionary:activity, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from Manual labour, which is usually carried out for wiktionary:remuneration, and from art, which is more concerned with the expression of ideas....
s, with the object of rousing the citizens to emulate the glorious deeds of their ancestor

Ancestor

An ancestor is a parent or the parent of an ancestor .Two individuals have a genetics relationship if one is the ancestor of the other, or if they share a common ancestor....
s.

The most famous are the Olympiacus of Gorgias

Gorgias

Gorgias , "the Nihilist", Greece sophist, pre-socratic philosophy and rhetorician, was a native of Leontini in Sicily. Along with Protagoras, he forms the first generation of Sophism....
, the Olympiacus of Lysias

Lysias

Lysias was an Attic orators....
, and the Panegyricus and Panathenaicus (neither of them, however, actually delivered) of Isocrates

Isocrates

File:Isocrates pushkin.jpgIsocrates , an ancient Greek rhetorician, was one of the ten Attic orators. In his time, he was probably the most influential rhetorician in Greece and made many contributions to rhetoric and education through his teaching and written works....
.

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Encyclopedia

A panegyric is a formal public speech, or (in later use) written verse, delivered in high praise of a person

Person

The term person in common usage means an individual human being. In the fields of law, philosophy, medicine, and others, the term also has specialised context-specific meanings....
or thing

Object (philosophy)

Eulogy

Greek language

Athens

Festival

Game

Ancestor

Gorgias

Lysias

Lysias was an Attic orators....
, and the Panegyricus and Panathenaicus (neither of them, however, actually delivered) of Isocrates

Isocrates

Pericles

Pericles was a prominent and influential statesman, orator, and general of History of Athens during the city's Age of Pericles?specifically, the time between the Greco-Persian Wars and Peloponnesian War wars....
by Thucydides

Thucydides

Thucydides was a Greeks history and author of the History of the Peloponnesian War, which recounts the 5th century B.C. war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 B.C....
, also partook of the nature of panegyrics.

The Romans

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
confined the panegyric to the living, and reserved the funeral oration exclusively for the dead. The most celebrated example of a Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
panegyric is that delivered by the younger Pliny

Pliny the Younger

Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo , better known as Pliny the Younger, was a lawyer, author, and natural philosopher of Ancient Rome....
(AD 100) in the senate

Roman Senate

The Senate of the Roman Republic was a political institution in the ancient Roman Republic. According to the Greek historian Polybius, our principal source on the Constitution of the Roman Republic, the Roman Senate was the predominant branch of government....
on the occasion of his assumption of the consulship, containing a somewhat fulsome eulogy

Eulogy

A eulogy is a Speech or writing in praise of a person or thing, especially one recently deceased or retired. The word is derived from the Greek word e?????a , meaning praise ....
of Trajan

Trajan

Marcus Ulpius Nerva Traianus, commonly known as Trajan , was a Roman Emperors who reigned from 98 until his death in 117. Born Marcus Ulpius Traianus into a nonpatrician family in the Hispania Baetica province , Trajan rose to prominence during the reign of emperor Domitian, serving as a general in the Roman army along the Limes G...
.

Towards the end of the 3rd and during the 4th century, as a result of the orientalizing of the Imperial court by Diocletian

Diocletian

Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus , born Diocles and commonly known as Diocletian , was Roman Emperor from November 20, 284 to May 1, 305....
, it became customary to celebrate as a matter of course the superhuman virtues and achievements of the reigning emperor

Emperor

An emperor is a monarch, usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress is the female equivalent. As a title, "empress" may indicate the wife of an emperor or a woman who rules in her own right ....
, in a formally staged literary event. The well-delivered, elegant and witty panegyric was a vehicle for an educated but inexperienced young man to attract desirable attention in a competitive sphere. The poet Claudian

Claudian

Claudian was a Roman poet, who worked for Emperor Flavius Augustus Honorius and the latter's general Stilicho.A Greek language citizen of Alexandria, Claudian arrived in Rome before 395, and made his mark with a eulogy of his two young patrons, Probinus and Olybrius, thereby becoming court poet....
came to Rome from Alexandria before about 395 and made his first reputation with a panegyric; he became court poet to Stilicho

Stilicho

Flavius Stilicho was a high-ranking general , Patrician and Consul of the Western Roman Empire, notably of barbarian birth....
.

Cassiodorus

Cassiodorus

Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator , commonly known as Cassiodorus, was a Roman Empire statesman and writer, serving in the administration of Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths....
the courtier and magister of Theodoric the Great

Theodoric the Great

File:Theodoric bronze weight inlaid with silver issued by prefect Catulinus Rome 493 526.jpg'Theodoric the Great' , known in Latin as 'Flavius Theodericus' and in Greek sources, was king of the Ostrogoths , ruler of Italy , and regent of the Visigoths ....
and his successors, left a book of panegyrics, his Laudes. As his biographer O'Donnell has said of the genre "It was to be expected that the praise contained in the speech would be excessive; the intellectual point of the exercise (and very likely an important criterion in judging it) was to see how excessive the praise could be made while remaining within boundaries of decorum and restraint, how much high praise could be made to seem the grudging testimony of simple honesty." ().

Qasida

Qasida

Qasida in Arabic language: ?????, plural qasa'id, ??????????; in Persian language: ????? , is a form of poetry from Islam Arabia....
is panegyric poetry in Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
, Persian

Persian language

Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe....
, and Urdu.

A person who writes panegyrics is called a panegyrist. Another term is eulogist.

Panegyric

Further reading