Although the Roman tendency to look back to the mos maiorum (‘the ways of the ancestors’) is well studied (B. Linke, M. Stemmler [edd.], Mos maiorum [2000]), the nature of Rome's eternity was up for far more interpretation. Tibullus is typically credited with branding Rome the urbs aeterna – ‘the eternal city’ – even if Cicero provided the earlier framework for the concept of an everlasting Rome (Tib. 2.5.23; Cic. Rep. 3.34 [fr. 2]). This edited volume explores the ways in which ancient writers and historical subjects living within the Roman Mediterranean conceptualised, articulated and envisioned this Roman imperial future across the Mediterranean. Born from a conference held in Tel Aviv in 2013, the editors, Price and Berthelot, bring together thirteen interdisciplinary articles penned by a wide range of scholars, who cover the period from the late Roman Republic to the traumatic period directly after the sacks of Rome during the fifth century ce.

The first four chapters take readers from Cicero's views of the future of Rome in the late Republic to the bucolic poetry and epic of the Augustan era. C. Lévy explores the under-examined remarks of Cicero, who underscored that, while Rome had a ‘unique fate’, this was due to a unification of exceptional geographic circumstances and anthropological abilities. This framework would be important for the emergence of the concept of Roma aeterna developed more fully in the Augustan rebuilding that followed the civil war of 44–30 bce. In the chapter on Eclogue 4 B.W. Breed explores the role of hope, concordia (‘harmony’) and variant time schemes. The poem, written around 40 bce, foretells the birth of a divine child and peace within a golden age; in hindsight, it would have a consequential impact on the perception of the Augustan Principate. The linear metallic ‘ages of man’ (gold, silver, bronze and iron) are intermixed with the Etruscan, cyclical concept of saecula in order to represent the future not as a distant reality but as a ‘developing pattern’. As is often the case with Virgil scholars, knowledge of the poem by the reader is assumed as given, rather than fully explained, but Breed convincingly shows that Virgil realises a return of a golden age will not be experienced by all in the same manner.

The third chapter in this sequence focused on Romans, by A. Haimson Lushkov, starts with Jupiter's prophecy in the Aeneid of an imperium sine fine (‘empire without end’, Virg. Aen. 1.279) and its meaning. She notes the rather ambivalent and anxiety-ridden boundaries set for Rome's future and her empire within Augustan epic. Poets like Ovid articulated a transition from a historical to a mythical time, while also noting the existence of constant flux within the cosmos. Buried beneath projections of the future lies implied doubt about the nature of Rome's eternity. And yet ritual actions – meant to coordinate communication with the Gods through acts standardised across time and space – were meant to decrease doubts and to create continuity between the past, present and future. In his chapter G. Woolf looks at how notions of posterity can be inferred from studying the inscribed Acta of the Arval Brothers in the first centuries ce, and argues that a key feature of Arval time was that it ‘remained independent of linear historical time’ and created a sense of stability; however, in the early imperial epigraphic habits (on stone furniture in the grove of Dea Dia, in the case of the Arvals) we can perhaps perceive a view of the future as ‘both predictable and risky’. Woolf refocuses our eyes to view ritual space not as a relic of memory, but as an essential way of managing risk, both of the short-term future of each emperor and, in the long term, of the future of Rome.

In the section on the Greeks, Price pivots to examine how Greek historians explained Rome and universal history. Following the victory of the Romans over the Macedonians in the Battle of Pydna in 168 bce, Greek historians such as Polybius, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Appian of Alexandria used the model of four empires defining the history of the world as seen in the Book of Daniel, with Rome being the fifth (4+1). What was more unknown was whether Rome was the last in line or if the succession would go on into perpetuity. Polybius would perhaps come to view Rome's fall as inevitable, as Josephus would centuries later, whereas Dionysius and Appian sketched a Roman future seemingly unending. Berthelot continues the examination of the use of four or five empires as a Greek succession scheme in her chapter on Philo of Alexandria (20 bce–45 ce). The Jewish writer views Tychē (and thus Fortuna) differently from many other Greek historians, such as Plutarch. Philo sees it in a negative light and regards the nature of human empires as ‘unstable and fugitive as that of individuals’ (p. 124) – only Israel would endure due to God's providential care for it.

In S. Rocca's examination of how Josephus uses the speech of King Agrippa II on the eve of the Jewish War in 66 ce within his Bellum Judaicum, our attention is still focused on the sources for Jewish views of the future. In the speech Agrippa ultimately encourages the Jews to wait with patience for their time and for their imminent sovereignty according to God's plan. Rather than rebelling in the present, they are asked to await their future divine salvation. In Chapter 8 J. Davies also analyses Josephus, particularly his depiction of the reign and death of Caligula, through which he reveals the Jewish God's plan and absolute control. But exactly when would Rome collapse and what role would Jews play? V. Noam explores the variant interpretations of Isaiah 10:33–4 on the defeat of the Assyrians as a biblical prophecy about the fate of Rome, in the context of the First Jewish War and then the Bar Kochba revolt (132–135 ce), and then its reuse by third-century rabbis to explain the conflict between Rome and Persia. The central role played by variant biblical exegeses in predictions for the future is an important takeaway.

From biblical prophecy to the role of oracles, E.S. Gruen's chapter transitions readers to think about the Jewish Sibylline Oracles’ ‘forebodings of doom for Rome’ (p. 191). He asks whether these mixed pseudepigraphic prophecies were in part a form of Jewish resistance in the decades following the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple. He zeroes in on the Fourth and Fifth Sibyls, but ultimately concludes that these are not written as ‘targeted resistance literature’ (p. 204). He encourages scholars not to seize upon individual allusions (e.g. to Nero) only when interpreting apocalyptic texts as acts of resistance, but to see them as a genre of their own that may be independent of events such as the trauma that followed the fall of the Temple. Again, it is all wrapped up in the ways that we read a text. In the end, Gruen's argument is that ‘Apocalyptic literature has a momentum of its own, independent of particular events, no matter how cataclysmic’ (p. 205).

In the final chapters, we turn to Christian fantasies of Rome's fall, followed by dreams of an eternal Rome once it had become Christianised. P. Oakes looks at the Book of Revelation and rejects some of the assertions of Gruen's chapter, showing how Rome and Nero are referenced in the complex agendas of John in writing it. In his chapter M. Marinčič looks at later Christian interpretations of how both Cicero and Virgil must have understood the truth of Christianity before it had even begun – and how Constantine played on this in his role as Augustus reborn as a Christian emperor. The final chapter is perhaps the most engaging, as H. Inglebert looks at Latin conceptions of Rome following the sacking of the city in 410 ce. He demonstrates the competing ideas of Augustan Roma Aeterna and of the Jewish and Christian idea of Rome as the Book of Daniel's fourth empire, but also demonstrates that ideas of hope or destruction varied based on whether one addressed Rome as a city or Rome as an empire. While there was a renewed period of hope in 417, pagans and Christians differed in opinions on the future of Rome around 448. While pagans saw an end of the prophesied twelve centuries of Roman rule, Christians took heart up to and even after the sack of Rome by the Vandals in 455 – with hope collectively bottoming out in the West after 468. Still, it is important to see that not all sentiments about the future of Rome can be characterised en bloc and that there were still glimmers and gestures of optimism among both Christians and non-Christians.

The volume is rich in close readings of texts, even if it is light on historical framing. Each of the volume's authors is tasked with exploring ‘Roman, Greek, Jewish and Christian Perspectives’. However, it could be more emphatically underscored that these categories are not themselves mutually exclusive. Christians and Jews were also Greeks and Romans. Using ‘Greeks and Romans’ as a kind of shorthand term for ‘pagans’ is not, in and of itself, a helpful or authentic category of analysis. The book is highly literary and has very little material culture beyond the arval inscriptions explored by Woolf. Yet more material culture could have added further strength to the convincing arguments and the important topic addressed, namely why we do not examine concepts of the future more in regard to Roman history. If we look to numismatics, for instance, we can trace the fact that during the course of the second and the third centuries ce, notions and representations of eternal time were in flux (M.B. Dowling, ‘A Time to Regender’ in: P.A. Harris and M. Crawford [edd.], Time and Uncertainty [2004]). Vespasianic coinage from 75–79 ce featured a female Aeternitas grasping the Sun and Moon, before Titus would add a globe under her foot. But under Hadrian, male notions of eternal time and the circular zodiac in art such as mosaics became more pronounced. Some concepts of time were old, some young, some male, some female, but each gestured to Rome's timelessness into the future.

It is not a fair metric to judge a book by what you wish it had included, but I do think the grounding of these analyses in the quotidian, material experiences of the everyday would have given readers a parallel sense of how regular Romans – not just Virgil, Cicero and Constantine – may have conceived of the future as they walked the streets of Pompeii or Antioch. As recent academic studies have consistently shown, the mental state of hope is essential to human well-being and overall health (C. Riley et al., American Journal of Public Health 112 [2022]). Hope, prophesy and the penchant for looking to the future are undeniably human characteristics that deserve more consideration by ancient historians. This volume provides an important starting point that breaks down the disciplinary walls between religious studies and ancient history in order to (re)start an important dialogue about how and why we should look to the future.