This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D.W.]
THE EMPEROR, Part 1.
By Georg Ebers
Translated by Clara Bell
It is now fourteen years since I planned the story related in thesevolumes, the outcome of a series of lectures which I had occasion todeliver on the period of the Roman dominion in Egypt. But the pleasuresof inventive composition were forced to give way to scientific labors,and when I was once more at leisure to try my wings with increase ofpower I felt more strongly urged to other flights. Thus it came to passthat I did I not take the time of Hadrian for the background of a taletill after I had dealt with the still later period of the early monasticmove in "Homo Sum." Since finishing that romance my old wish to depict,in the form of a story, the most important epoch of the history of thatvenerable nation to which I have devoted nearly a quarter century of mylife, has found its fulfilment. I have endeavored to give a picture ofthe splendor of the Pharaonic times in "Uarda," of the subjection ofEgypt to the new Empire of the Persians in "An Egyptian Princess," of theHellenic period under the Lagides in "The Sisters," of the Roman dominionand the early growth of Christianity in "The Emperor," and of theanchorite spirit—in the deserts and rocks of the Sinaitic Peninsula—in"Homo Sum." Thus the present work is the last of which the scene will belaid in Egypt. This series of romances will not only have introduced thereader to a knowledge of the history of manners and culture in Egypt, butwill have facilitated his comprehension of certain dominant ideas whichstirred the mind of the Ancients. How far I may have succeeded inrendering the color of the times I have described and in producingpictures that realize the truth, I myself cannot venture to judge; forsince even present facts are differently reflected in different minds,this must be still more emphatically the case with things long since pastand half-forgotten. Again and again, when historical investigation hasrefused to afford me the means of resuscitating some remotely ancientscene, I have been obliged to take counsel of imagination and rememberthe saying that 'the Poet must be a retrospective Seer,' and could allowmy fancy to spread her wings, while I remained her lord and knew thelimits up to which I might permit her to soar. I considered it my lawfulprivilege to paint much that was pure invention, but nothing that was notpossible at the period I was representing. A due regard for suchpossibility has always set the bounds to fancy's flight; whereverexisting authorities have allowed me to be exact and faithful I havealways been so, and the most distinguished of my fellow-professors inGermany, England, France and Holland, have more than once borne witnessto this. But, as I need hardly point out, poetical and historical truthare not the same thing; for historical truth must remain, as far aspossible, unbiassed by the subjective feeling of the writer, whilepoetical truth can only find expression through the medium of theartist's fancy.
As in my last two romances, so in "The Emperor," I have added no notes:I do this in the pleasant conviction of having won the confidence of myreaders by my historical and other labors. Nothing has encouraged me tofresh imaginative works so much as the fact that through these romancesthe branch of learning that I profess has enlisted