The Emperor | Page 2

mind.
Those who at the same time enrich their knowledge by its study ought
not to detect the fact that they are learning.
Those who are learned in the history of Alexandria under the Romans
may wonder that I should have made no mention of the Therapeutai on
Lake Mareotis. I had originally meant to devote a chapter to them, but
Luca's recent investigations led me to decide on leaving it unwritten. I
have given years of study to the early youth of Christianity, particularly
in Egypt, and it affords me particular satisfaction to help others to
realize how, in Hadrian's time, the pure teaching of the Saviour, as yet
little sullied by the contributions of human minds, conquered--and
could not fail to conquer--the hearts of men. Side by side with the

triumphant Faith I have set that noble blossom of Greek life and
culture--Art which in later ages, Christianity absorbed in order to dress
herself in her beautiful forms. The statues and bust of Antinous which
remain to us of that epoch, show that the drooping tree was still
destined to put forth new leaves under Hadrian's rule.
The romantic traits which I have attributed to the character of my hero,
who travelled throughout the world, climbing mountains to rejoice in
the splendor of he rising sun, are authentic. One of the most difficult
tasks I have ever set myself was to construct from the abundant but
essentially contradictory accounts of Hadian a human figure in which I
could myself at all believe; still, how gladly I set to work to do so!
There was much to be considered in working out this narrative, but the
story itself has flowed straight from the heart of the writer; I can only
hope it may find its way to that of the reader.
LEIPZIG, November, 1880.
GEORG EBERS.

THE EMPEROR.
CHAPTER I.
The morning twilight had dawned into day, and the sun had risen on the
first of December of the year of our Lord 129, but was still veiled by
milk-white mists which rose from the sea, and it was cold.
Kasius, a mountain of moderate elevation, stands on a tongue of land
that projects from the coast between the south of Palestine and Egypt. It
is washed on the north by the sea which, on this day, is not gleaming,
as is its wont, in translucent ultramarine; its more distant depths slowly
surge in blue-black waves, while those nearer to shore are of quite a
different hue, and meet their sisters that lie nearer to the horizon in a
dull greenish-grey, as dusty plains join darker lava beds. The
northeasterly wind, which had risen as the sun rose, now blew more

keenly, wreaths of white foam rode on the crests of the waves, though
these did not beat wildly and stormily on the mountain-foot, but rolled
heavily to the shore in humped ridges, endlessly long, as if they were of
molten lead. Still the clear bright spray splashed up when the gulls
dipped their pinions in the water as they floated above it, hither and
thither, restless and uttering shrill little cries, as though driven by terror.
Three men were walking slowly along the causeway which led from the
top of the hill down into the valley, but it was only the eldest, who
walked in front of the other two, who gave any heed to the sky, the sea,
the gulls, and the barren plain that lay silent at his feet. He stopped, and
as soon as he did so, the others followed his example. The landscape
below him seemed to rivet his gaze, and it justified the disapproval
with which he gently shook his head, which was somewhat sunk into
his beard. A narrow strip of desert stretched westward before him as far
as the eye could reach, dividing two levels of water. Along this natural
dyke a caravan was passing, and the elastic feet of the camels fell
noiselessly on the road they trod. The leader, wrapped in his white
mantle, seemed asleep, and the camel-drivers to be dreaming; the
dull-colored eagles by the road-side did not stir at their approach. To
the right of the stretch of flat coast along which the road ran from Syria
to Egypt, lay the gloomy sea, overhung by grey clouds; to the left lay
the desert, a strange and mysterious feature in the landscape, of which
the eye could not see the end, either to the east or to the west, and
which looked here like a stretch of snow, there like standing water, and
again like a thicket of rushes.
The eldest of our travellers gazed constantly towards heaven or into the
distance; the second, a slave who carried rugs and cloaks on his broad
shoulders, never took his