Detectives in Togas

Originally published in Germany in 1956. Illustrated by Charlotte Kleinert, And translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston

Who would expect to arrive at school and find the teacher bound and gagged and stuffed in the wardrobe? That's just what Mucius, Antonius, and three other young Romans discover one morning. Though the room is a shambles, the only stolen articles are a few mathematical textbook and a wax writing tablet on which their friend Rufus, angry with another schoolmate, had written the previous afternoon:

"Caius is a dumbbell." 

These same words, in Rufus's hand-writing, are found scrawled in red paint on the wall of the temple of Minerva. Such desecration is enough to send Rufus to prison. Rufus swears he is innocent, and in a fight against time his young friends set out to find the real culprit. As their search grows warmer, the clues become frightening in their political implications, and a terrifying visit to the sooth-sayer nearly spells disaster.