This chapter analyses some of the ways in which time was conceptualised in imperial debate, focusing in particular on the diverse uses of classical models of empire. I argue that Victorian imperialists were usually keen to escape the gravitational pull of the ancients, because the resonant lesson they drew from history was that empires were self-dissolving. Roman experience taught that empires eventually collapsed in ruins, Greek experience that settler colonies only thrived when formally independent of the “mother country.” Neither vision appealed to those aiming to create a resilient imperial formation. Instead, they borrowed selectively from the past, arguing that unlike its predecessors and potential competitors the British empire was not condemned to repeat the ostensible pattern of all human history. I demarcate two popular argumentative strategies, both of which can be seen as instances of historicism. One attempted to reconcile progress and empire by insisting that the British were unique in some important respect – usually their purported ability to harmoniously combine “libertas et imperium” in a manner appropriate for an industrial, democratic age. The other was to argue that Greater Britain – the settler colonies plus the “mother country” – constituted a radically new type of political association. According to such accounts, empire was transfigured into something else: a federation, a transcontinental state, a multinational commonwealth. This novel form of polity was not subject to traditional anxieties about corruption and overextension but was instead a pioneering manifestation of political trends reshaping world order at the time.