Learning from Pliny: Claudian's Advice to the Emperor Honorius

Pliny's panegyric to Trajan (100 C.E.) expresses the hope that his words will encourage good emperors and show bad emperors what they should do. The kingship orations of Dio Chyrostom had a similar motivation. Three centuries later, the poet Claudian would summarise key points of Pliny's oration and Dio's discourses and present them in the form of a lesson to the young emperor Honorius from his father Theodosius. Unlike Pliny and Dio, however, Claudian's intention was not to instruct the emperor in rulership but, paradoxically, to encourage him to remain a pupil forever, leaving power in the hands of his regent Stilicho.