Ronald Syme, review of M. Durry,
Pline le Jeune: Panégyrique de Trajan, in his
Roman Papers, I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 76-87 (at 76):
The solitary speech surviving from three whole centuries of post-Ciceronian Latin oratory has had a long time to wait for an adequate
commentator. Monstrous neglect, one might think. Yet there is some
excuse. Many scholars have expressed a marked and personal distaste for
Pliny's masterpiece. 'Ein höchst unerfreuliches Produkt', says the grave
and judicial Schanz; and Schiller spoke of 'Bombast und fast byzantinische
Kriecherei'. Not only is the subject repulsive—an official theme with
repetitive and ingenious praise of the head of the government: the style
of the orator, technically perfect and palatable in small doses, soon becomes tedious through preciosity and unrelenting pursuit of the pointless
epigram and forced antithesis.
[....]
The Panegyricus is an example of a definite literary type, namely the
actio gratiarum of a consul. Pliny spoke his thanks when entering office on
1 September, A.D. 100....As it stands, the Panegyricus would take three
hours to declaim. That is terrible. As F.A. Wolf observed long ago,
'enecuisset principem novus consul si ita dixisset ut scripsit.'
Id. (at 80):
The evidence of coins could be more copiously invoked to illustrate the
official meanings of words and the nature of the programme advertised
by the government. Mattingly, by his frequent quotation of the Panegyrictts when discussing the coinage of Nerva and Trajan, shows how
effectively the two sources can be combined (BMC, R. Emp. iii (1936)).
Indeed, many chapters in Pliny's speech could be given coin-legends for
their headings.
Id. (at 86):
To sharpen the necessary contrast between good emperors and bad,
no device was too trivial, no sophistry too transparent. Domitian abolished pantomimes: permitted again by Nerva, they were forbidden by
Trajan. Pliny was equal to the theme—'utrumque recte; nam et restitui
oportebat, quos sustulerat malus princeps, et tolli restitutos' (Pan. 46, 3).
The government is always right.
Id. (at 87):
The Panegyricus may perhaps be regarded not merely as the heir of a
long tradition but as a herald and symbol of the intellectual and spiritual
poverty of the period that was to follow, a condition not solely due to
despotic government or to any repression of free speech: there was nothing
worth writing about. Pliny was alarmed at the state of contemporary
youth, observing rebelliousness and dangerous originality—'statim sapiunt,
statim sciunt omnia, neminem verentur, imitantur neminem atque ipsi
sibi exempla sunt' (Ep. viii 23, 3). He need not have worried. These
dynamic young men (if they really existed) were soon to become dreary
and representative figures, leaders of state and society in a dead season, the
blessed Age of the Antonines.