panegyric

Flattering speech or written expression of praise. In Roman times, a series of these, addressed to reigning emperors, were collected as the Panegyrici Latini. The first of these was by Pliny the Younger about Emperor Trajan. A literary example is the tribute paid to England in a speech by John of Gaunt in Shakespeare's Richard II.

The term ‘panegyric’ originally meant a festival speech, such as that in which Isocrates urged the Greeks to unite against Persia. The term then came to denote a public eulogy, such as the funeral oration of Pericles over the Athenians who fell in the first year of the Peloponnesian War.