Videre deum: presenza e immagini del princeps nella poesia encomiastica di età Flavia

This paper focuses on the chance for the crowd or for an individual to see Domitian in the encomiastic texts of Martial and Statius. I aim to examine the relationship between the civitas and the princeps and the role of the poet/singer within the crowd scenes; then, thanks to a comparison with Calpurnius Siculus, I will show that even when an individual is in the presence of the emperor, texts do not capture specific elements, which close viewing would make it possible to notice. At the end of my paper, some remarks are offered on the quite different ways that visual data take on in Martial’s epigrams for Trajan.