(Lat.; Gk. enkōmion).
A work of prose or poetry composed in praise of an individual. In its original sense, encomium denotes a choral song, sung by a kōmos (group of revellers), praising the winner of a musical or athletic competition. The meaning was later extended to include any laudatory song, poem or speech. A eulogy, a funeral oration for those who died in battle, an epideictic speech in praise of a historical or mythical figure, a verse-epitaph praising the life of the deceased, a skolion (banquet song) in praise of the host: each could be classified as an encomium. Aristotle (Rhetoric, i, 1367b; Eudemian Ethics, ii. 1.12) specified that an encomium praises actual deeds (erga), not qualities of virtue or excellence (aretē). Plato (Republic, x. 607a) distinguished between encomia, which praise mortals, and hymns, which honour gods. Although Plato himself did not consistently maintain this distinction, the Alexandrian grammarians, who gathered and classified Archaic and classical Greek literature, found the categories useful. Victory songs (encomia in the radical sense) were classified as epinikia, poems to the gods as hymns, and the category of encomium became a repository for any remaining praise poetry.
O. Crusius: ‘Enkomion’, Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, x (Stuttgart, 1905/R), 2581–3
A.E. Harvey: ‘The Classification of Greek Lyric Poetry’, Classical Quarterly, new ser., v (1955), 157–75
B. Gentili: Poesia e pubblico nella Grecia antica: da Omero al V secolo (Rome, 1984, 2/1995; Eng. trans., 1988)
R.L. Fowler: The Nature of Early Greek Lyric: Three Preliminary Studies (Toronto, 1987), 86–103
MICHAEL W. LUNDELL