Herrscherpanegyrik unter Trajan und Konstantin

In this work, Christian Ronning shows how Latin panegyric was part of an elaborate system of signs and rituals to express complex relationships of power and subjection in Roman society. He studies how the interpretative power of the well-trained rhetorician was used to smooth administrative measures and to adapt imperial orders to the structures and demands of an aristocratic elite which ruled the cities of the Imperium Romanum. As a highly specialized code, panegyric was a language of social power that should not be misunderstood as »propaganda« but rather seen as a means of maintaining the fiction of a tight relationship between emperor and viri boni even in times of growing intransparency of rulership and government.