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Lives of the Caesars. Martial: Epigrams. Pliny: Letters .
    Mr. M. took the noble volume from the inspector. “A charming selection! First, that almost unbelievable story of how absolute power came successively to twelve mostly commonplace men, with results utterly fantastic and generally fatal not only to those around them but to themselves. Then, the incomparably terse satire-comment on such a society by Epigram’s father. And finally, the quiet reflections of a perfect gentleman who lived just after that too-exciting time—the ideal position for a moralist. I have always admired this way of showing Latin’s Golden Age turning, as autumn does in late October, from the gold to the silver. Here’s an example: this placing of the famous Martial Epigram 1.14 on one page and on the opposite the Pliny Epistle 111.16. What could be happier—each throwing light on the other! And after the horrors of the actual tyranny, as Suetonius has given it earlier, the poet and the essayist select for comment an act of heroism that shines all the more brightly against the sullen background of arbitrary violence.”
    I think the inspector was a little impatient at Mr. M. for having caught and bettered his taste in rhetoric. Certainly I wasn’t sorry when we were brought back from comments on classical cutthroats to our actual problem.
    â€œYou will see,” our informant went on, “why I have shown you this book. You are looking at the actual page which the victim was reading when the fatal impulse took him. It indicates what I feel sure any jury, without a doctor to help them, would conclude served as the ‘trigger action.’”
    â€œBut,” Mr. M. challenged, “how do you know this was the actual page he was reading and not merely the way the book fell when he toppled over it?”
    â€œLook closely into the cleft of these pages. There’s cigarette ash, see, that silted down into the binding. That proves this was the point Sankey had reached when suddenly the impulse took him.”
    â€œBut why …?” Mr. M. began; and then fell silent, reading.
    His question was apparently sensed by our very informed informant.
    â€œReading live clues to trace dead men’s motives keeps one from having time to read dead languages,” he said. “But as soon as I saw that the ash had marked the last page the dead man had read, I had it translated. The vicar here, who had to come up to see about the funeral and whom I interrogated about Millum, is a fine Latinist and kindly made this rendering for me,” and he took a slip of paper from his pocket. “These lines do provide us with the sudden provocation, the final proof that here we have suicide.”
    But before he could read his scrap or I could shift round and glance at the original that had provided such an unexpected provocation to felo-de-se , Mr. M.’s voice, in the best lectern manner, boomed out: “‘Taking the dagger she drove it into her own side, withdrew it, handed it to her hesitating husband, remarking quietly as she sank, “It does not hurt, Petus!’” A fairly free translation, but it will serve.”
    And after paying himself this first compliment, he turned handsomely on his colleague, “Yes, that’s a fine piece of deduction and a core piece in your argument. Sankey, brooding on suicide, reads how noble it is to die, and, further, in this classic case, how easy death by self-stabbing really is! ‘So every bondsman in his own hand bears the power to cancel his captivity.’ And to borrow another line from the same poet so much greater than Martial, the bondsman may do it ‘with a bare bodkin.’”
    If our guide had been a little impatient at Mr. M.’s competing with him in phrase-making, that was now all forgotten at this open appreciation and apparent conviction. He almost flushed with pleasure, and showed his friendliness with an added desire to