[6] Despite the political and economic hegemony of the city, however, Trier failed to make any significant mark on the rhetoric of the period.
Some have argued that Menander of Laodicea's treatises were particularly influential on the collection, and believed his precepts were used in the tenth panegyric.
Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria, for example, treats the subject of an oration's ancestry, parentage, and country in a manner similar to the panegyrics of 289, 291, 297, 310, 311, 321, and 389.
[11] Parallels with other Latin orators, like Cicero and Pliny the Younger, are less frequent than they would have been if those authors had served as stylistic models.
[13] To students of Latin in Late Antiquity, Cicero and Virgil represented the paragons of the language; as such, the panegyrists made frequent use of them.
As a source of praise, Cicero's panegyric of Pompey in support of the Manilian law (De Imperio Cn.
[23] The Aeduan orators, who refer to Julius Caesar in the context of Gaul and Britain, are either directly familiar with his prose or know of his figure through intermediaries like Florus, the historian.
[32] The panegyrics held it as a matter of fact that the appearance of an emperor was directly responsible for bringing security and beneficence.
[33] The orators held this visible presence in tension with another, more abstract notion of the timeless, omnipresent, ideal emperor.
[38] They differ from the earlier orations because they were delivered outside of Gaul (in Rome and Constantinople), and because the names of their authors are preserved.
[41] Because the collection is thematically unconnected and chronologically disordered, Nixon and Rodgers conclude that "it served no political or historical purpose", and was simply a tool for students and practitioners of panegyrical rhetoric.
[30] Roger Rees, however, argues that the circumstances of its composition (if Pacatus is taken as its compiler) suggest that it was intended to illustrate Gaul's continuing loyalty to Rome.
[42] Of the sixteen surviving Latin speeches written in praise of Roman emperors before the year 400, twelve are included in the Panegyrici Latini.
[43] Only one manuscript of the Panegyrici Latini survived into the 15th century, when it was discovered in 1433 in a monastery in Mainz, Germany by Johannes Aurispa.
The evidence of the surviving manuscripts suggests that Aurispa's copy of M was made in haste, and that the Italian manuscripts are generally inferior to the other tradition, H.[44] Another independent tradition branches off of M: H (at the British Library: Harleianus 2480), N (at Cluj, Romania: Napocensis), and A (at the Uppsala University Library).