Tarzan and the Lost Empire by Edgar Rice Burroughs

“I wish that Nyuto would see me and talk with me,” said Tarzan of the Apes. “Then he would know that it would be better to have me for a friend than for an enemy. Many men have tried to kill me, many chiefs greater than Nyuto. This is not the first hut in which I have lain a prisoner, nor is it the first time that men have prepared fires to receive me, yet I still live, Lukedi, and many of them are dead."

In January, we read an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel in which Tarzan met the descendants of English crusaders who were still living like it was the medieval era right there in the middle of Africa.  In February, we read an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel in which David Innes met the descendants of 17th-century pirates who were living like it was the 1600s right there in Pellucidar.  Well, it's March and today we're going to read an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel in which Tarzan meets people descended from Roman legionaries who are living like its the 1st century A.D. right there in the middle of Africa.  Africa really is the most diverse continent! 

Tarzan and the Lost Empire debuted in 1928 and '29 across five issues of the magazine Blue Book.  Four of those issues of Blue Book have cover illos devoted to the latest saga of Lord Greystoke, and these illustrations are laden with spoilers--who could have guessed that Tarzan would fight a lion in this adventure?

I am experiencing Tarzan and the Lost Empire via my $1.25 Ballantine copy of the novel, Ballantine 24171, which has a Boris Vallejo cover.  The cover of the paperback says "complete and unabridged," but I don't know about that.  In Chapter 10 of this edition we find "rein" for what appears (correctly) as "reign" in Ace F-169, the 40¢ edition with the Frazetta cover, and in a 1931 Grosset & Dunlap hardcover.  Now, maybe that is just a typo.  But look at the epigraph I have placed at the head of this blog post, Tarzan telling a member of the Bagego tribe, who are preparing to burn Lord Greystoke alive, that he has been captured many times and escaped many times.  Tarzan, in my Ballantine edition, says "...nor is it the first time that men have prepared fires to receive me...."  But in the Ace and Grosset & Dunlap editions Tarzan says "...nor is it the first time that black men have prepared fires to receive me...."  The word "Negro," capitalized in my Ballantine, is not capitalized in the Ace or Grosset & Dunlap printings, and at least once "blacks" in the older books is replaced in the Ballantine with "Negroes."  Maybe not a big deal if you are reading Tarzan for fun, but something to keep in mind if you are reading these novels with an eye to learning about the period in which they were written or about Burroughs himself and what he actually wrote. 

Burroughs gets right down to business as we begin Tarzan and the Lost Empire.  After Tarzan's little buddy Nkima the monkey opines that the white man is the worst kind of man (Tarzan doesn't count, he being considered by all a creature of the jungle), a white man shows up to request Tarzan's help.  This guy is a German missionary, Doctor von Harben.  His son Erich, an expert linguist and archaeologist and an amateur mountain climber, is missing!  The Doctor and Tarzan, like everybody in the jungle, know of the legend of a white tribe living in the Wiramwazi mountains, and when Erich heard about the legend he decided to investigate it.  But he hasn't returned from this expedition, even though some of his African porters have come back.  These survivors of the expedition to Wiramwazi are pretty close-lipped about what happened, and the Doctor asks for Tarzan's help.  By the sixth page of text, Tarzan is already on his way to Wiramwazi, little Nkima (you can see him on the cover of Blue Book and in Frazetta's cover illo for Ace F-169) sitting on his shoulder.   

In Chapter 2 we join Erich on the slopes of the Wiramwazi.  Erich has been abandoned by all his black hirelings, their superstitious fears of the ghosts said to inhabit the mountains having overcome their courage.  These deserters took all of the expedition's food and rifles with them, but Erich isn't sore--after all, what can you expect from a bunch of Africans?  Anyway, he has his Luger and can hunt rabbits with it as he climbs the mountains in search of their secrets.

For much of the novel the narrative switches back and forth between Tarzan's adventures and Erich's.  As Tarzan proceeds to the Wiramwazi, Nkima, a coward and a blusterer, offers pretty entertaining comic relief.  It is thanks to Nkima's interference that  Tarzan falls while climbing the outer slope of the Wiramwazis and hits his head; unconscious, he is captured by a tribe of blacks, the Bagego.  For centuries, the Bagego have been in contact with the white tribe of the Wiramwazi; the whites sometimes raid the Bagego, and sometimes trade with them.  Among the Bagego there is no consensus on whether the Wiramwazi tribe is made up of flesh and blood men or ghosts--many think the white men are actually the ghosts of the Bagego's ancestors.

Meanwhile, Erich is rejoined by his most loyal black hireling, Gabula, and the two men go through several pages of mountain climbing which Burroughs renders quite entertaining.  On the other side of the Wirmwazi, Erich and Gabula find a valley with a swamp, forest, river and island; when they get down into the valley they are captured by black warriors.  These Africans speak a version of Latin, and bear swords and spears that remind Erich of those used by the ancient Romans!  These blacks are provincials of a small Roman empire, and take Erich and Gabula to the fortified city with an architecture much like that of classical Greece and Rome where live the people who dominate them.  This city is inhabited by a small elite of white people (among them a beautiful woman, daughter of a leading intellectual, Favonia, by whom Erich is smitten),  a soldier and commercial class of mixed-race people whom Burroughs refers to as "brown," and a working and slave class of blacks.  Apparently the  Roman ruling class arrived here almost 1900 years ago and have had no contact with other white people since then; they have made little technological or cultural progress and wear togas and throw people into the arena and so forth.

The Bagego village is raided by brown legionaries commanded by a white officer and Tarzan is captured along with a bunch of villagers.  it turns out here are two Roman cities in the valley beyond the Wiramwazi, each with its own Emperor, and they have been engaged in a cold war for over 1700 years.  The city Erich was taken to is Castrum Mare; Tarzan is dragged to the other, Castrum Sanguinarius.  Erich has managed to make friends over in Castrum Mare because he speaks Latin, but Tarzan can't speak Latin, and in Castrum Sanguinarius he is tossed in the dungeon under the arena, and then dragged before Emperor Sublatus.  Taller, faster and stronger than everybody else, Tarzan escapes the Emperor's court, humiliating the Emperor in the process.  Looking down into a courtyard from a tree, Tarzan spots an aristocrat trying to rape a woman, and, Good Samaritan that he is, he rescues her.  The would-be rapist turns out to be Emperor Sublatus's son, Fastus!  The woman is Delicta, daughter of a senator.

Erich is taken to meet the Emperor of Castrum Mare, Validus Augustus, and the Emperor is fascinated by Erich's knowledge of the history of Rome since the founder of Castrum Sanguinarius left Europe during the reign of Nerva.  Erich is shanghaied into the job of writing down all he knows about European history and even writing Validus Augustus' biography.  Here, at the midway point of the novel, we get exposition about the history of the two Roman cities here in this African valley and a dose of that court intrigue that I find kind of boring, and the novel, which has been fast paced and focused on interesting relationships heretofore, bogs down a little bit.  It didn't help that I briefly mixed up the conniving courtier of Castrum Mare, Fupus, adoptive son of Validus Augustus, with the equally villainous Fastus, son of Sublatus, over in Castrum Sanguinarius.

For weeks, while Erich is in Castrum Mare, ascribble scribble scribble (but taking breaks to flirt with Favonia), Tarzan is in hiding in Castrum Sanguinarius, protected by Delicta's fiancé, a popular officer in the army, and learns to speak Latin (which he could sort of read, already, thanks to his European education.)  But eventually Sublatus's lackeys get their hands on Tarzan and Delicta's fiancé, and they end up in the dungeons under the arena along with many blacks and a spy from Castrum Mare, an aristocrat out of favor with Validus Augustus but popular with the people sent here in a fool's errand.  Burroughs has been hinting that Castrum Mare is the better-run and less corrupt of the two Roman cities*, though the current Emperor is corrupt, and now he makes it very clear.  Also made more clear is that there are many many more Africans in the valley than white people; Tarzan begins to consider leading the blacks in an uprising against the cruel Sublatus regime.

*Heredity and eugenics are recurring themes in Burroughs' work, and we learn that there is almost no crime in Castrum Mare because, for many centuries, criminals have been executed--along with their families!  This keeps criminal tendencies from polluting the gene pool. 

The last third of Tarzan and the Lost Empire is solid adventure fiction, with Tarzan making friends with and becoming leader of the men with whom he is imprisoned and who fight at his side in the arena over the course of a week-long celebration and then in the uprising against Sublatus that Tarzan sparks.  What goes on in the dungeon, as the men plot to escape, and in the arena and during the uprising, the different types of fights that Tarzan and his comrades get forced into, is entertaining.  Burroughs puts a lot of focus on human relationships--the evolving and quite fickle sentiment of the crowd towards Sublatus and Tarzan, and Tarzan's own relationships with his fellow prisoners.  In the climax of the arena sequence, Sublatus, having failed to destroy Tarzan by making him fight men and then a lion, has six apes set upon him, only to see the apes recognize Tarzan as a friend.  These apes form an important part of the uprising, as do the black tribes of the valley and even Tarzan's own tribe, the Waziri, summoned from far away by Nkima.

Having overthrown Sublatus and put the father of Delicta on the throne of Castrum Sanguinarius, Tarzan and the Waziri, along with that spy and others, march at the head of an army to Castrum Mare to rescue Erich.  Erich has been thrown in the arena thanks to the machinations of Fupus, who wants to marry Favonia, but before the games begin the daring Gabula comes from out of nowhere to murder Validus Augustus in front of the assembled populace.  In the ensuing chaos, Erich and Gabula and the other people sentenced to the arena escape to hiding places within the city; Fupus becomes Emperor.  Fupus's agents find Erich and friends just as the army that is with Tarzan arrives and overthrows the unpopular and incompetent Fupus; Erich is saved and can marry Favonia, and that spy is made Emperor.  The novel ends with Tarzan praising the initiative taken by Nkima in bringing the Waziri.

Tarzan and the Lost Empire, the twelfth Tarzan book, is a step up from number 11, Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle.  The arena, fighting, and mountain climbing scenes here in book 12 are better than the jousting and fighting scenes in its predecessor, and the characters and their relationships are more fun.  The Roman cities embroiled in a cold war in this novel are more interesting than the medieval cities locked in a cold war in the previous novel.  So, thumbs up for Tarzan and the Lost Empire.  I'm looking forward to Tarzan #13, Tarzan at the Earth's Core! 

Detail of illustration from the February 1929 Blue Book