To Praise the Emperor

To Praise the Emperor is the doctoral thesis of Dr Carl Buckland. The primary purpose of the work is to consider the literary value of the XII Panegyrici Latini - a collection of 12 speeches mostly dating from the late 3rd Century to late 4th Century AD. These speeches praise the emperors from the period of the Tetrarchy - Diocletian, Maximian and Constantius Chlorus; through the reign of Constantine the Great; to the later rules of the last pagan emperor Julian the Apostate; and the scourge of paganism, Theodosius the Great. This thesis considers the importance of rhetorical theory in the shaping and composition of these works - particularly how they may have been influenced not only by rhetorical handbooks, such as the work of the 3rd Century writer Menander Rhetor, but also by the teachings of important rhetorical theorists from Gorgias, Plato and Aristotle down to Cicero and Quintilian. The thesis also looks at the importance of practical exempla as well as the theoretical and considers the influence of texts such as Isocrates' Evagoras and Pliny's Panegyricus; with an aim to showing that these under-appreciated works have a lot more to offer than previously thought.