by way of Disclaimer I don't know when I have undertaken anything with more hesitation than this preface, which my publishers have demanded of me. They have done so because they don't wish, as they put it, "to be associated with anything which may turn out to be a fraud without making their doubts as to the authenticity of the publication known".

Fair enough, of course; but where does it leave me, for even the strongest disclaimer is unlikely to allay the reader's doubts? After all, if the book itself is not what it purports to be, why should the introduction be believed? And yet I see why they want it. That is the irritating thing. It's the coincidence as much as anything which disturbs them. Let me explain then, as far as I can. In 1984 the autobiography of the Emperor Augustus was discovered in the Macedonian monastery of SS Cyril and Methodius (not St Cyril Methodius as erroneously stated by Professor Aeneas Fraser-Graham in his introduction to my English version of the book, an error which has persisted obstinately, despite my appeals, in British, American, French, Italian, German and, as far as I can determine squinting at uncut pages, Danish editions).

This autobiography, lost since antiquity, but attested to by Suetonius and other writers, was entrusted to me to translate. Mine was to be a popular edition published in advance of the great scholarly annotated edition which was being prepared and is still, as far as I know, being prepared, and indeed looks likely to remain in that state of preparation for a long time to come. That is no concern of mine however.

My translation attracted gratifying notice on the whole, also, of course, the attention of the odd lunatic; one such, for example, informing me that page 121 of the American edition disclosed the secrets of the Great Pyramid, which is surely unlikely.

Then, eighteen months ago, when I was visiting Naples at the invitation (as I supposed, though this was in fact an error on my part) of the British Council, I was accosted in the Galleria Umberto by a stout middle-aged man in a dingy suit.