Panegyric

A panegyric is a formal public speech, or (in later use) written verse, delivered in high praise of a person or thing, a generally highly studied and undiscriminating eulogy, not expected to be critical.

Classical Greece

In Athens such speeches were delivered at national festivals or games, with the object of rousing the citizens to emulate the glorious deeds of their ancestors. The most famous are the Olympiacus of Gorgias, the Olympiacus of Lysias, and the Panegyricus and Panathenaicus (neither of them, however, actually delivered) of Isocrates. Funeral orations, such as the famous speech of Pericles in Thucydides, also partook of the nature of panegyrics.

Roman Empire

The Romans generally confined the panegyric to the living, and reserved the funeral oration exclusively for the dead. The most celebrated example of a Latin panegyric, however, is that delivered by the younger Pliny (AD 100) in the Senate on the occasion of his assumption of the consulship, which contained a eulogy of Trajan considered fulsome by some scholars.