Michèle Lowrie is Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Service Professor of Classics and the College, University of Chicago. She is the author of Horace's Narrative Odes (1997) and Writing, Performance, and Authority in Augustan Rome (2009) and had edited Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Horace's Odes and Epodes (2009), and co-edited Exemplarity and Singularity: Thinking through Particulars in Philosophy, Literature, and Law (2015) and The Aesthetics of Empire and the Reception of Vergil (2006). Barbara Vinken is chair of French and Comparative Literature at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich. Her most recent books include Krieg als Opfer? Franz Marc illustriert Gustave Flauberts 'Legende des Heiligen Julian' (2021), Bel Ami. In diesem Babylon leben wir noch immer (2020) and Flaubert Postsecular: Modernity Crossed Out (2015).

• Introduction; 1. Figures of discord; 2. Oriental empire: Vergil, Georgics; 3. Empire without end: Vergil, Aeneid and Lucan, De bello civili; 4. The eternal city: Augustine, De civitate Dei; 5. The republic to come: Hugo, Quatrevingt-treize; 6. The empire to come: Houellebecq, Soumission; Bibliography.

'Michèle Lowrie and Barbara Vinken's book addresses an important topic at a crucial moment … this is an important and challenging book …' Samuel Agbamu, Bryn Mawr Classical Review