The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cleopatra, by H. Rider Haggard

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Title: Cleopatra

Author: H. Rider Haggard

Release Date: March 28, 2006 [EBook #2769]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLEOPATRA ***

Produced by John Bickers; Dagny; Emma Dudding

CLEOPATRA

by H. Rider Haggard

DEDICATION

My dear Mother,

I have for a long while hoped to be allowed to dedicate some book
of mine to you, and now I bring you this work, because whatever its
shortcomings, and whatever judgment may be passed upon it by yourself
and others, it is yet the one I should wish you to accept.

I trust that you will receive from my romance of "Cleopatra" some such
pleasure as lightened the labour of its building up; and that it
may convey to your mind a picture, however imperfect, of the old and
mysterious Egypt in whose lost glories you are so deeply interested.

Your affectionate and dutiful Son,

H. Rider Haggard.

January 21, 1889.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The history of the ruin of Antony and Cleopatra must have struck many
students of the records of their age as one of the most inexplicable
of tragic tales. What malign influence and secret hates were at work,
continually sapping their prosperity and blinding their judgment? Why
did Cleopatra fly at Actium, and why did Antony follow her, leaving his
fleet and army to destruction? An attempt is made in this romance to
suggest a possible answer to these and some other questions.

The reader is asked to bear in mind, however, that the story is told,
not from the modern point of view, but as from the broken heart and
with the lips of an Egyptian patriot of royal blood; no mere
beast-worshipper, but a priest instructed in the inmost mysteries, who
believed firmly in the personal existence of the gods of Khem, in the
possibility of communion with them, and in the certainty of immortal
life with its rewards and punishments; to whom also the bewildering and
often gross symbolism of the Osirian Faith was nothing but a veil woven
to obscure secrets of the Sanctuary. Whatever proportion of truth there
may have been in their spiritual claims and imaginings, i