"Haggard, H Rider- Cleopatra" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haggard H. Rider)

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