Addressing the United States in the 21st century, especially after 2001, this book analyzes engagements with Greek and Roman antiquity across literature, art, and public discourse, reading Seneca’s Medea, Homer’s epics, and the verses of Sappho alongside Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones and the poetry of Ocean Vuong and Juliana Spahr, among others. Eccleston argues that invocations of classical antiquity structure contemporary narratives of crisis and belonging and can mask or contest racial and social hierarchies embedded in national life.