PROJECT ASHABI
African Stories. Limitless Worlds.
PROJECT ASHABI
African Stories. Limitless Worlds.
Project Gutenberg Archive
Complete unabridged public-domain literary work from the Project Gutenberg archive.
Project Ashabi is being built as the home of original African comics, webtoons, graphic novels, and fiction.
This third-party Novel / Book title is temporary preview content. Step by step, third-party titles will be phased out and replaced exclusively by Ashabi Originals created by African writers and artists.
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ANDIVIUS HEDULIO Adventures of a Roman Nobleman in the Days of the Empire
Mirum atque inscitum somniavi somnium. --PLAUTUS
[Illustration: THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE SECOND CENTURY A.D. To Show The Wanderings Of ANDIVIUS HEDULIO]
[Illustration: THE CITY OF ROME UNDER THE EMPIRE]
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON WHO, IN READING FICTION, LOVED "THE OPEN ROAD AND THE BRIGHT EYES OF DANGER"
By no means absurd, it seems to me, but altogether reasonable, is the impulse which urges me to write out a detailed narrative of my years of adversity and of the vicissitudes which befell me during that wretched period of my life. My adventures, in themselves, were worthy of record and my memories of them and of the men and women encountered in them are clear and vivid. It is natural that I should wish to set them down for the edification of my posterity and of any who may chance to read them.
For my experience has been, I believe, unique. Since the establishment of the Principate in our Republic many men, even an uncountable horde of men, have incurred Imperial displeasure. Of these not a few, after banishment from Italy or relegation to guarded islands or to some distant frontier outpost, have survived the Prince who exiled them and have, by the favor of his successors, been permitted to return to Rome and to the enjoyment of their property. But I believe that no Roman nobleman implicated, justly or unjustly, in any conspiracy against the life of his Sovereign, ever escaped the extreme penalty of death. Some, by their own hands, forestalled the arrival of the Imperial emissaries, others perished by the weapons or implements of those designated to abolish the enemies of the Prince. Except myself not one ever survived to regain Imperial favor in a later reign; except myself not one ever recovered his patrimony and enjoyed, to a green old age, the income, position and privileges to which he had been born. If such a thing ever occurred, certainly there is no record of any other nobleman domiciled in Italy, except myself, having grasped at the slender chance of escape afforded by the device of arranging that he be supposed dead, of disguising himself, of vanishing among the populace, of passing himself off for a man of the people. I not only was led, by my clever slave, to attempt this histrionic feat, but I succeeded in the face of unimaginable difficulties. An experience so notably without a parallel seems peculiarly deserving of such a record as follows.
Arthur Conan Doyle
