Convinced that the epic, as a genre, no longer makes sense, Baudelaire however does not give up on a heroism of the present, which he raises to the level of the organising principle of poetic imagery and discourse. The values and motifs of an ancient world, lit up by nobility, greatness and glory, thus come back in contexts that purposefully distract from their pertinence, distort their meaning or inflect their resonances. Far from celebrating the virtues of a time finally come, the “epic side of modern life” (Salon de 1846) reflects the oblique light of a nostalgic consciousness in mourning. Against History and its fatal advance, this “epic side” establishes itself as a mechanism for coming back, thus favouring a kind of anxiety about the past and redefining the present as the perpetually redefined theatre of a constant struggle with time – a scene that gives the anonymous heroes of daily life their greatness and nobility. This paper studies some of these epic resurgences in the Spleen de Paris.