Word Finder - panegyric

definition

A formal speech or opus publicly praising someone or something.

synonyms

• eulogy

definition

Someone who writes or delivers such a speech.

definition

Panegyrical

Rousseau, a fervid panegyric showing a good deal of talent but no power of criticism.

Of the former, his panegyric on the emperor Anastasius alone is extant; the description of the church of St Sophia and the monody on its partial destruction by an earthquake are spurious.

The Romans confined the panegyric to the living, and reserved the funeral oration exclusively for the dead.

On that day, he tells us, while his sons occupied the curule chairs in the senate-house, he himself had the honour of pronouncing a panegyric on the monarch.

Rousseau, who was jealously sparing of his praises, addressed to him, in his Nouvelle Heloise, a fine panegyric; and when a stranger flatteringly told Voltaire he had come to see a great man, the philosopher asked him if he had seen Abauzit.

Its historical value was considered small, it being avowedly a panegyric, and contemporaries (including even Alexander himself) regarded it as untrustworthy.

He had previously (1717), in an historical tract on the war with Charles XII., in which Peter himself collaborated, epitomized, in a high panegyric style, some of the greatest exploits of the tsar-regenerator.

Byron's fervid panegyric enlisted on his side all who admired Byron - that is to say, the majority of the younger men and women of Europe between 1820 and 1850 - and thus different sides of his tradition were continued for a full century after the publication of his chief books.

The former was now mixed with Latin and classical expressions; much of the literature consists of fulsome panegyric, verses written on the marriages and funerals of nobles, with conceits and fantastic ideas, devoid of all taste, drawn from their coats of arms. The poets of this period are, as may be imagined, in most cases mere rhymesters; there are, however, a few whose names are worth recapitulating, such as Waclaw Potocki (c. 1622 - c. 1696), now known to have been the author of the Wojna Chocimska, or "War of Khotin," the same campaign which afterwards formed the subject of the epic of Krasicki.

His life, in the form of a warm panegyric, written at his widow's request by Herennius Senecio, caused its author's death in the reign of Domitian.

He published his autobiography in 1894, concluding with a warm panegyric upon British rule in Egypt.

It is rather a family panegyric than a scientific history, in which the affection of the daughter and the vanity of the author stand out prominently.

The Chronicle of Alvaro de Luna (Madrid, 1784), written by some loyal follower who survived him, is a panegyric and largely a romance.

See Sidonius Apollinaris, Panegyric of Majorian; Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch.

Original compositions were also contained in these saturae, and among them the panegyric on Scipio, unless this was a drama.

The real foundation of his fortunes was the success of a panegyric on St Louis delivered before the Academy in 1772, which caused him to be recommended for an abbacy.

The usual funeral panegyric was pronounced on him in the Forum, and the people would have had him buried by the side of Sulla in the Campus Martius, but at his brother's request he was laid in his splendid villa at Tusculum.

Thrasea's own model of life and conduct was Cato of Utica, on whom he had written a panegyric, one of Plutarch's chief authorities in his biography of Cato.

It is probably the last-named who is referred to by Calpurnius Siculus under the name of Meliboeus, and he is the subject of the panegyric De laude Pisonis.

In 467 the emperor Anthemius rewarded him for the panegyric which he had written in honour of him by raising him to the post of prefect of Rome, and afterwards to the dignity of a patrician and senator.

From the Arabic point of view the life of Richard's rival, Saladin, is described by Beha-ud-din, a high official under Saladin, who writes a panegyric on his master, somewhat confused in chronology and partial in its sympathies, but nevertheless of great value.

He composed an autobiography, published under the name of his freedman Phlegon; wrote speeches, fragments of two of which are preserved in inscriptions (a panegyric on his mother-in-law Matidia, and an address to the soldiers at Lambaesis in Africa).

When made bishop of Orleans in 1849, he pronounced a fervid panegyric on Joan of Arc, which attracted attention in England as well as France.

He also studied philosophy, astronomy and geometry, and wrote works on those subjects, which, together with his consulship, formed the subject of a panegyric by Claudian.

Then at last comes the real subject of the poem, usually the panegyric of some man of influence or wealth to whom the poet has come in hope of reward and before whom he recites the poem.

Panegyric and satire (hija`) were his chief instruments.

So late as the 16th century, Bossuet delivered a panegyric upon her, and it was the action of Dom Deforis, the Benedictine editor of his works, in criticizing the accuracy of the data on which this was based, that first discredited the legend.

The Life of Agricola by his son-in-law Tacitus is practically a panegyric or funeral oration.

Gregory of Nyssa's untrustworthy panegyric represents him as having wrought miracles of a very startling description; but nothing related by him comes near the astounding narratives given in the Martyrologies, or even in the Breviarium Romanum, in connexion with his name.

Alongside Origen we may rank Hippolytus of Rome on the strength of the one sermon of his which is extant, a panegyric on baptism based on the theophany which marked the baptism of Jesus.

Besides the Panegyric, we possess the nine books of Pliny's Letters, and a separate book containing his Correspondence with Trajan.

On the 1st of September in the year zoo, when Trajan was consul for the third time, Pliny, who had been designated consul for a part of the year, was appointed to deliver the "Panegyric" which has come down to us, and forms a most important source of our knowledge concerning this emperor.

The tone of the "Panegyric" certainly lends itself to the supposition of some historians that Trajan was inordinately vain.

Our best authority is the 68th book of Dio Cassius; then comes the "Panegyric" of Pliny, with his correspondence.

Pliny's Panegyric was discovered by Aurispa at Mainz (1433), and his correspondence with Trajan by Fra Giocondo in Paris about 150o.

At the age of twelve (51 B.C.) he delivered the customary funeral panegyric on his grandmother Julia, his first public appearance.

This was nearly completed, when Cicero earnestly requested him to write a separate history of his (Cicero's) consulship. Cicero had already sung his own praises in both Greek and Latin, but thought that a panegyric by Lucceius, who had taken considerable interest in the affairs of that critical period,_.

In 1609 he wrote the noble panegyric, In felicem memoriam Elizabethae, and the curiously learned and ingenious work, De Sapientia Veterum; and completed what seems to have been the Redargutio Philosophiarum, or treatise on the " idols of the theatre."

Nor can he have written the funeral panegyric on Basil who survived him by three months.

The writer of the panegyric must be distinguished from Drepanius Florus, deacon of Lyons (c. 850), author of some Christian poems and prose theological works.

See lives of Agesilaus by Xenophon (the panegyric of a friend),.

The Life of Constantine, in four books, published after the death of the emperor, which occurred in 337, is a panegyric rather than a sober history, but contains much valuable material.

Thrasea was the subject of a panegyric by Arulenus Rusticus, one of the tribunes, who had offered to put his veto on the decree of the senate, but Thrasea refused to allow him to throw his life away uselessly.

Again he returned to Alexandria amid the enthusiastic demonstrations of the populace, which is described by Gregory of Nazianzus, in his panegyric on Athanasius, as streaming forth like " another Nile " to meet him afar off as he approached the city.

Livio Bellorum omnium annorum DCC Libri duo, is written in a bombastic and rhetorical style, and is rather a panegyric of the greatness of Rome, whose life is divided into the four periods of infancy, youth, manhood and old age.

One could of course compose a panegyric of love, and many have done so.

According to Isocrates, whose panegyric must however be read with caution, Evagoras was a model ruler, whose aim was to promote the welfare of his state and of his subjects by the cultivation of Greek refinement and civilization, which had been almost obliterated in Salamis by a long period of barbarian rule.

The chief authority for the life of Evagoras is the panegyric of Isocrates addressed to his son Nicocles; see also Diod.

This panegyric, which is accompanied by a series of epitaphs and is composed in a strain of fearless extravagance, was, as the author declares, written "unfee'd"; it shows that Ford sympathized, as Shakespeare himself is supposed to have done, with the "awkward fate" of the countess's brother, the earl of Essex.

The book closes with the allusion to Germanus and the panegyric on Justinian as the conqueror of the Goths referred to above.