First Sentence

"I, WHO have been, or will be, Nicholas Crabbe of Crabs Herborough in the duchy of Kent-and who am Odysseys son of Laertes, an immortal and sometime inhabitant of olympian palaces-but now known as King Balthazar of Moxoene which will be called (or which was once called) in the time whence I came (or in the time to which I yet shall come) Van in Armenia-I swear, by my honour and by my faith as a king who never has built altars to Roma and Julius (like the Ephesians and Nikaians) or to Rome and Augustus (like Bithynia and Asia), that the things which I here cause to be written, and write, are true."