Palatine Apollo and the Imperial Gaze: Propertius 2.31 and 2.32

The Propertian speaker's private erotic gaze evolves into Foucault's "panoptic" gaze of state control, illustrating in the process the early and formative years of Augustan social ideology and its relation to urban renewal. Composed almost a decade before the passage of social legislation in 18 B.C.E. (leges Iuliae), Propertius 2.31—the ecphrasis of the temple to Apollo on the Palatine—and its companion piece 2.32 anticipate the radical redefinition of imperial power under Augustus, the encroachment of the state into the private domains of family and sexuality, and the eventual use of such legislation as a "strategy of surveillance."