Myrtala (1886) is a historical novel by the famous Polish writer Eliza Orzeszko (1841–1910). The novel takes us to Ancient Rome of the first century AD, in those years when the Jewish War ended and Jerusalem was taken. At the center of the story is the conflict between two peoples, the Romans and the Jews. Eliza Orzeszko shows how this conflict is refracted in the fate of a Jewish girl, Myrtala, who faces a choice between love and loyalty to her people. The story about Mirtal is woven into a broad historical and artistic context: the novel features real and fictional characters whose fates will help us better understand that distant era, and perhaps even the present.