as to the Vita Maximi of Eunapius, which has not been accessible to him. Two days later (February 6) he writes to Hegel: "I have the great pleasure of being able to inform you that my long work is finished—and more to my satisfaction than any of my earlier works. The book is entitled Emperor and Galilean, a World-Drama in Two Parts. It contains: Part First, Caesar's Apostasy; play in five acts (170 pp.); Part Second, The Emperor Julian, play in five acts (252 pp.). . . . Owing to the growth of the idea during the process of composition, I shall have to make another fair copy of the first play. But it will not become longer in the process; on the contrary, I hope to reduce it by about twenty pages. . . . This play has been to me a labour of Hercules—not the actual composition: that has been easy—but the effort it has cost me to live myself into a fresh and visual realisation of so remote and so unfamiliar an age." On February 23, he writes to Ludvig Daae, discussing further the orthography of the Greek names, and adding: "My play deals with a struggle between two irreconcileable powers in the life of the world—a struggle which will always repeat itself. Because of this universality, I call the book 'a world-historic drama.' For the rest, there is in the character of Julian, as in most that I have written during my riper years, more of my own spiritual experience than I care to acknowledge to the public. But it is at the same time an entirely realistic piece of work. The figures stood solidly before my eyes in the light of their time—and I hope they will so stand before the readers' eyes."
The book was not published until the autumn (October 16, 1873). On September 8, Ibsen wrote to Brandes that he was daily expecting its appearance. "I hear from Norway," he went on, "that Björnson,
