The noun Ancient Greek: πανήγυρις, romanized: panḗgyris had been borrowed into Classical Latin by around the second century CE, as panēgyris 'festival' (in post-Classical usage also 'general assembly').
[1] 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.
[1] Towards the end of the 3rd and during the 4th century, as a result of the orientalizing of the Imperial court by Diocletian, it became customary to celebrate as a matter of course the superhuman virtues and achievements of the reigning emperor,[1] in a formally staged literary event.
In 336, Eusebius of Caesarea gave a panegyric of Constantine the Great on the 30th year of his reign, in which he broke from tradition by celebrating the piety of the emperor, rather than his secular achievements.
[5] Persian language panegyric poems from the Middle Ages contain details on the life of court poets and their patrons, and shed light on contemporary attitudes and matters of political and military interest such as Farrukhi Sistani's qasida on Ghaznavid ruler Mahmud of Ghazni's incursion against the Somnath temple.
Wars against Muslims required additional explanations and some poems by Farrukhi and Mu'izzi advocated in favor of Mahmud's capture of Rayy and Ahmad Sanjar's attacks against the Ghaznavid ruler Arslan-Shah in 1117.
[9] The custom of panegyrics addressed to monarchs was revived in the Baroque period, though there do exist Renaissance examples such as Bruni's Laudatio florentinae urbis to Florence of 1403, and Erasmus's Panegyricus, first published in 1504.