Global InformationPanegyricus Messallae information
 | This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (January 2024) |
The Panegyricus Messallae, also known as the Laudes Messallae ("Praises of Messalla"),[1] is a 212-line Latin poem in dactylic hexameters included in the 3rd book of the Roman poet Tibullus's collected works. It is a panegyric or praise-poem apparently written to celebrate the installation to the consulship of Tibullus's patron the Roman aristocrat Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus in 31 BC. The poem is numbered 3.7 in the Tibullus collection. It follows the six elegiac poems of "Lygdamus" and is followed by the five elegiac poems known as the Garland of Sulpicia.
Like most of the 20 poems in the 3rd book of Tibullus, its date and authorship are disputed, with scholars disagreeing whether it was written by Tibullus or another member of Messalla's circle around 31 BC, or whether (as many scholars think) it is a piece of pseudepigrapha written by an anonymous author many years later.
The poem has received different critical reactions. According to one scholar, it is "by common consent the least successful work in the Corpus Tibullianum".[2] But it has also been called "brilliant, though excessively rhetorical".[3]
- ^ Although the title Panegyricus Messallae is more commonly used, the main manuscript has Laudes Messallae, and the latter is also preferred by Maltby (2021). The title Panegyricus Messallae is reported by Scaliger to have been used in a now lost manuscript belonging to Jacques Cujas, the so called Fragmentum Cuiacianum (Maltby 2021, §2.2.2).
- ^ Bright (1984), p. 143.
- ^ Radford (1926), p. 151.