The Wisdom of Emperors

An ancient emperor who, along with his entire army, vanished from the historical record for ten years, as if into thin air. A long-suffering scribe, dragged along on a quest that was doomed from the start, furiously scrawling his thoughts in a manuscript that will be lost for millennia. An enslaved young man, as beautiful as a marble statue, breaking his chains and flying to freedom. And a patient, steadfast scholar, dauntlessly seeking the answer to a mystery that has plagued historians for two thousand years.

The great tragedy of studying history is that there is so much we will never know. But a recent archaeological excavation has discovered an ancient manuscript, allegedly the journal kept by one of Emperor Cabian’s scribes during the years of his mysterious disappearance. Though most historians initially dismissed it as a hoax or a forgery, Amatio Orlanti took on the challenge—not only proving the authenticity of the manuscript, but translating it, uncovering the most jaw-dropping corroborating sources and, at last, presenting these astonishing revelations to the world: The truth of Cabian’s ill-fated journey, the twin poisons of imperialist violence and desperate, misguided love that drove him relentlessly onwards, and the ultimate fate of his lost beloved, the legendary beauty Anaticula.

This new edition of Orlanti’s dissertation, with its academic commentaries and explanatory footnotes now revised for the general public, offers a glimpse of one of the most famous figures of Ancient Lausa—and casts a light on the rot and depravity lying behind the empire’s outward magnificence.

Miracles in history and archaeology just don’t happen… except when they do.