‘The Discontinuous History of Imperial Panegyric in Byzantium and its Reinvention by Michael Psellos,’ Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 59 (2019) 693-713. (original) (raw)

HE MATRIX OF BYZANTINE LITERATURE was training in rhetorical theory and rhetorical performance, which shaped the form, language, goals, argumentation, nuances, and other compositional modalities of most written texts. Rhetorical training also provided the templates for actual speeches, such as homilies and funeral orations. 1 For modern historians of Byzantium the most important type of speech is the imperial panegyric, formal speeches in praise of an emperor, because they contain precious historical information, push the propaganda of each court, or at least the speaker's political thought, and supposedly reveal the Byzantines' basic assumptions about their empire and ruler. Panegyric was an ancient genre and practice, and by the early Byzantine period formalized recommendations had emerged for praising emperors. We have one such textbook (attributed to a certain Menandros) with advice and templates for the basilikos logos. 2 We have many 1 The standard survey of rhetorical genres is H. Hunger, Die hochsprachliche profane Literatur der Byzantiner I (Munich 1978) 63-196; a more engaging survey in G. A. Kennedy, Greek Rhetoric under Christian Emperors (Princeton 1983); a briefer and more recent one in E. Jeffreys, "Rhetoric in Byzantium," in I. Worthington (ed.), A Companion to Greek Rhetoric (Chichester 2010) 166-184; the papers in E. Jeffreys (ed.), Rhetoric in Byzantium (Aldershot 2003), and M. Grünbart (ed.),