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This article contends that there is a debate in postwar France about the nature of freedom. It argues that an important nexus of that debate can be seen by comparing Marguerite Yourcenar’s Mémoires d’Hadrien with the work of her contemporary, Simone de Beauvoir. It makes the supplementary argument that one can shine a more focused light on this dialogue by observing the way in which Yourcenar’s position anticipates the later arguments of Michel Foucault, Both Yourcenar and Foucault turn to antiquity as a way of strengthening their argument and relativizing the construction of the modern normative subject.