nvestigations 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

BOOK 1.

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