Civil War and the Collapse of the Social Bond

Can civil war ever be overcome? Can a better order come into being? This book explores how the Roman civil wars of the first century BCE laid the template for addressing perennially urgent questions. The Roman Republic's collapse and Augustus' new Empire have remained ideological battlegrounds to this day. Integrative and disintegrative readings begun in antiquity (Vergil and Lucan) have left their mark on answers given by Christians (Augustine), secular republicans (Victor Hugo), and disillusioned satirists (Michel Houellebecq) alike. France's self-understanding as a new Rome – republican during the Revolution, imperial under successive Napoleons – makes it a special case in the Roman tradition. The same story returns repeatedly. A golden age of restoration glimmers on the horizon, but comes in the guise of a decadent, oriental empire that reintroduces and exposes everything already wrong under the defunct republic. Central to the price of social order is patriarchy's need to subjugate women.

• Frames the long history of thinking about civil war in Roman terms, with French literature as the salient example
• Exemplifies collaborative, interdisciplinary research between scholars working in ancient (Roman) and modern (French) literatures
• Shows how the orientalism that arose in Roman literature's representations of the battle of Actium continues to resonate in modernity and that sexuality remains a potent site for examining breakdown in social relations