The Future of Rome

Explores future visions under a universalizing empire that many thought would never die.

Demonstrates that Romans, Greeks, Jews and Christians imagined the future of Rome in strikingly different ways, revealing profound differences in their conceptions of history and historical time, the purpose of history, the meaning of written words and oral traditions.How was the future of Rome, both near and distant in time, imagined by different populations living under the Roman Empire? It emerges from this collection of essays by a distinguished international team of scholars that Romans, Greeks, Jews and Christians had strikingly different answers to that question, revealing profound differences in their conceptions of history and historical time, the purpose of history, the meaning of written words and oral traditions. It is also argued that practically no one living under Rome's rule, including the Romans themselves, did not think about the question in one form or another.