Detectives in Togas

Detectives in Togas

Book cover (2003)
Author	Henry Winterfeld
Original title	Caius ist ein Dummkopf
Translator	Richard and Clara Winston
Illustrator	Charlotte Kleinert
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Children's literature
Publisher	Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Published	1956
Media type	Print
OCLC	48846777
Followed by	Mystery of the Roman Ransom

Detectives in Togas (original title: Caius ist ein Dummkopf; "Caius is an Idiot") is a children's book written by Henry Winterfeld, and translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston. Set in ancient Rome, the story follows a group of schoolboys who try to solve several crimes: the attack on their teacher and the desecration of a temple wall.

Detectives in Togas was published in 1956, and reissued in 1984, 1990, and 2003. It was marketed for children ages 9–12.^[1] It was followed by two sequels: Caius geht ein Licht auf ("Caius has a Revelation"; English title: Mystery of the Roman Ransom) and Caius in der Klemme ("Caius is in Trouble").

Synopsis[]

The story opens in the midst of a Greek vocabulary class in the Xanthos School. A prank played by Rufus on Caius, which involves a wax tablet with the inscription "Caius is an idiot", severely backfires when Caius takes offense and triggers a fight with Rufus. Enraged at Rufus' act of subterfuge, Xanthos permanently dismisses him from his school, and Rufus leaves in deep dejection. When the rest of the pupils (sans Caius, who is skipping the day) arrive at the school the next morning, they find the classroom and adjacent living quarters ravaged and Xanthos, bound and gagged, locked inside his closet. After being rescued, Xanthos tells them that he was knocked out by a burglar the night before, and with his leg injured during the attack, he is forced to suspend school until healed. He also admits that Rufus' dismissal was only meant to be a wholesome lesson and that he is welcome to return to the school.

The boys head back to their homes on the Esquilinus to inform Rufus about the good news when they are shocked to discover the words "Caius is an idiot" painted on the wall of the local Minerva temple. Before they can attempt to remove the writing, Caius' sister Claudia, whose home is adjacent to the temple, warns them that her father has seen the graffiti and that Caius has implicated Rufus. Alarmed, the boys rush to Rufus to warn him, finding him uncharacteristically downcast and secretive. Rufus swears that he didn't commit the desecration and surmises that someone else must have forged his handwriting. The boys return to the Xanthos School to find the wax tablet, but find it missing. Instead, they discover a gold chain (a cloak clasp) which Xanthos recognizes as the property of the burglar.

As the boys return to the Vinicius villa to plead with the senator, they pass a billboard featuring the daily public news, including an anonymous writ describing the desecration and blaming Rufus by name. Retreating quickly, the boys meet Vinicius, but their attempts to placate him are futile, and the angered senator insists on seeing Rufus. But as the boys go to inform him, Rufus' mother Livia tells them to their horror that Rufus has already been denounced and arrested. As the search Rufus' room, they find his clothes thoroughly soaked; and just then Rompus, a slave of the household, returns with important news: Rufus' father, General Marcus Praetonius, recently thought to have lost an important battle in Germania, has turned his supposed defeat into an overwhelming victory. When Rompus learns that Rufus has been arrested, he breaks down and confesses that he witnessed Rufus acting strangely upon his return from school the previous evening, later ran away from the villa and did not return before the following morning, with his clothes soaked. When Rompus threatened to tell Livia about this, Rufus suddenly implored him to keep silent for his father's sake, without elaborating on the reason why. This leads to the boys and Livia to suspect that Rufus was being blackmailed into scrawling on the temple wall, and proving his innocence would thus result in his release.

The boys decide to consult Lukos, a famed foreign seer and reputed sorcerer whose abode lies right across the Xanthos School. They enter his home and present the gold chain so he can find out the burglar's identity, but they are inexplicably chased out of his house, leaving the chain behind. Mucius, who has in the meantime found Rufus' cloak inside the house, is accidentally locked in, but finds an alterantive escape via a ladder to the roof. Blinded by a storm, Mucius ends up falling through an opening in the roof of a neighboring bathhouse and lands in a pool that is being drained for the night, which saves his life. Locked inside the building, he is found by a bath keeper the next morning and learns from him that Rufus had also landed in the same bath last night.

After convening in their headquarters, a hidden cave in the cliffside of the Esquilinus, the boys, rejoined by Caius, try to formulate a plea to the Emperor himself to pardon Rufus when Xanthos, who was informed by Livia, tracks them down. After finding their accumulated "evidence" useless for the task, he collects the details the boys have found out and comes to the realization that the writ on the billboard was handed in for publication before the temple wall was desecrated. After some investigation at the Censor's office, they learn to their surprise that the writ was handed in by Tellus, a famous ex-consul known for his lavish parties. Xanthos suspects that one of Tellus' guests must have committed the sacrilege, and Antonius is sent to Tellus under a pretense to study the guest list of that particular day. Arriving in the midst of a feast, Antonius is plied with alcohol by Tellus; but while giving his host the slip, he finds the gold chain and its accompanying cloak inside Telus' bedroom, indicating a relationship between Tellus and Lukos. As Xanthos and his students ponder this, they are visited by a former jail prisoner who was in the same cell as Rufus; Rufus sent him to tell his friends to "rip the sheep's pelt off the wolf".

While Xanthos and the boys try in vain to decipher the scant clues they have, Antonius suddenly spots Tellus sneaking into a bakery next to Lukos' house. Xanthos sends the boys after him, who discover that the bakery's backyard offers an alternate entryway to Lukos' abode. They sneak inside, but are trapped by Lukos, who confesses that he, not Tellus, is responsible for the burglary in the school, the smearing of the temple wall, and Rufus' arrest because the boy had found out his most important secret. As he prepares to lock them up, the boys attack him and knock him out, and discover to their bafflement that Lukos is Tellus in disguise (with the name Lukos being derived from the Greek word "ho lukos" = "the wolf").

When Tellus recovers his consciousness, he confesses that he posed as a clairvoyant to pay off the massive debts he had accumulated due to his lifestyle, abusing his friendships and trust in Rome's high society, even with the Emperor himself. Rufus had sought Lukos out to charm Xanthos into forgetting about his dismissal, but thereby discovered his true identity. Tellus managed to coerce him into silence by threatening to have his father executed for his defeat in Germania, whereupon Rufus fled up the ladder and subsequently landed in the bathhouse. But right afterwards, Lukos received a final visitor who informed him of Praetonius' actual victory, long before the news was made public. Knowing that his stranglehold on Rufus was gone, Tellus decided to implicate him by stealing the wax tablet and using it as a stencil. In his impatient haste to see Rufus silenced, he also sent the writ to the Censor's office and, when things weren't working out quickly enough, he reported him to the urban prefect; he had also arranged for Rufus to be secretly taken away to end his life as a galley slave.

Tellus implores the boys to leave and fetch help, to buy himself time to destroy all evidence of his double life. The boys force him to write a confession, but then Lukos tries to trick them. Foiled, he flees up the ladder to the roof just as Vinicius, Xanthos and a group of praetorians arrive to rescue them. The party tracks Tellus to the bathhouse, where they find him dead after a fatal plunge into an already drained pool. Rufus is freed just in time, and after Xanthos' recovery all the boys return to school, where Caius humorously ends up proving his slow-wittedness to be true, causing Xanthos, for the first time before his students, to break out in hilarious laughter.

Characters[]

Caius

The son of Vinicius, a very influential senator. Despite being the featured character in the German titulations, he habitually plays a more secondary role in the stories. He is somewhat slow-witted, stubborn and has a very short temper, and tends to inadvertently plunge his friends into deep trouble (thereby forming the base of their adventures).

Xanthos/"Xanthippus"

A Greek scholar who has opened a private school for the sons of wealthy patricians in the heart of Rome. Because of his stern and critical manner, his pupils have given him the nickname "Xanthippus", based on Xanthippe, the wife of Socrates. However, whenever the boys get involved in dangerous adventures, he is a ready and very valuable source of knowledge and experience.

Mucius

The oldest of Xanthos' pupils, and as the most level-headed, also the leader of their band. His father is a famous tribune named Marius Domitius.

Rufus

The son of Marcus Praetonius, a famous general of modest wealth. He has an open crush on Caius' sister Claudia.

Antonius

The son of a senator. He is the most adventurous and imaginative of the boys, eager to dream up fanciful confrontations with all sorts of villains, monsters and other dangerous enemies.

Flavius

A senator's son. He is the most cowardly of the boys, but also extremely faithful to his friends and always tags along on their exploits.

Julius

The son of a senator and judge, and therefore quite knowledgable about Roman law. As the most frugal of the boys, he is also their treasurer.

Publius

Son of a senator, and the group's most vociferous complainer who regularly tangles with Caius.

Claudia

Caius' younger sister. Despite her tender years (11-13, as the series progresses), she has assumed the role of the Vinicius household's matron upon her mother's death.

Senator Vinicius

Caius and Claudia's father, and a high-ranking member of the Roman Senate. He is occasionally entrusted with confidential missions by the Emperor.

Reception[]

In the journal Elementary English, the reviewer calls it a "rousing detective story" and notes that Winterfeld was inspired by actual graffiti found during the excavation of Pompeii.^[2] The journal The Classical World says Detectives in Togas is a "simple and lively story".^[3] A reviewer in the library journal Collection Management says it "adds life to the study of ancient civilizations".^[4]

The Christian Science Monitor says Detective in Togas "neatly succeeds in constructing a lesson in ancient history around the plot of a whodunit and spinning the whole thing into a great tale for middle school readers".^[5] A reviewer in Huntingdon Daily News says the book has a "fascinating setting", and is "full of suspense and excitement".^[6]

Kirkus Reviews describes it as "A good story and with its careful attention to Roman ways, this has its sparkle too"^[7] and Publishers Weekly calls it "delightful and witty".^[8] For the 2003 reissue, reviewer Terri Schmitz says it is "action-packed and filled with details about what daily life was like for patrician Roman boys, providing painless history lessons along with the rousing story lines."^[9] The Guardian says readers "end up learning loads of interesting information about Ancient Rome as you go along - and even a bit of Latin!"^[10]

References[]