Roman Panopticon?

After explaining the intrusive gaze of the Roman censor, Shardi asks whether the Romans created an ancient predecessor of Bentham’s panopticon, made famous by Foucault. She recognizes the analogies, but says that the “differences are perhaps more striking than the similarities.”

First, in contrast to Bentham’s circular prison, the Roman gaze was reciprocal: “in republican Rome entire social groups are engaged in reciprocal acts of watching and evaluating, with the stakes highest (and most evident in our souces) at the highest levels of the political hierarchy.” Romans were seen; but they also watched.

Second, Bentham’s panopticon was designed form prisoners while Roman visual politics operated among an elite.

Finally, “the panoptic gaze is purely assessing, purely judgmental. There is no sense of glory in being the object of its focus, no room for triumph or for the display of family lineage, no assignment of exemplarity to be handed down for posterity. At Rome, these were the rewards for subscribing to the shared values of the community and performing them in the flesh – at least during the republican period. One of the most salient aspects of the transition to empire was precisely the breakdown of these rewards and the breakdown, too, of the reciprocity f the gaze. Along with this went a breakdown in the distinction between safe and unsafe forms of visibility.”