The Spectacle of Gazes: Seeing and Being Seen in the First Book of Horace’s Epistles
By Silvia Speriani
Abstract: In ancient Rome, city-life unfolded in a spectacular exchange of social gazes. My paper focuses on the visual dynamics in the social life of Rome through the approach shown by Horace in Epistles 1: from his first letter, the poet programmatically declares himself “watched enough,” dramatizing his claim for independence through a visual motif. I demonstrate that Horace shows a heightened sensitivity to the visual experience: on the one hand, he lays bare the disturbing role that visual ties play in city life; on the other hand, he himself relies on visual interactions in redefining his social role and, above all, his relationship with Maecenas.
Published in The Classical Journal, Vol. 113, No. 4 (2018), pg. 428-452