"No students? Personal slaves?"

"He did all his work alone save for such workmen as he requested. He had a valet, a slave owned by the Museum and assigned to him. Few of us feel the need for a staff of slaves."

"I would like to question the valet," I said.

"Senator," he said, his patience wearing thin, "I must remind you that this is an affair to be investigated by the crown of Egypt."

"Oh, I'll clear things with Ptolemy," I said confidently. "Now, if you will be so good, I think it would be best if you were to assign a secretary to make an inventory of every object in this room: papers, drawings, valuables, everything right down to the furniture. If items known to have belonged to Iphicrates prove to be missing, it could be helpful in determining the identity of the murderer."

"I suppose it would do no harm," he grumped. "The king's appointed investigator might find it useful as well. Is this some new school of philosophy of which I was previously unaware?"

"It's my own school. You might call it 'applied logic.'"

"How very: Roman. I shall assign competent personnel."

"Good. And be sure that they list the subjects of all the drawings and papers."

"I shall be sure to do so," he fumed. "And now, Senator, if you do not mind, we have funeral arrangements to make on behalf of our departed colleague."

"Asklepiodes?" I said.

"I have seen enough." He rose from beside the corpse and we went aside to a corner of the room.

"How long has he been dead?" I asked first.

"No more than two hours. He probably died about the time the banquet was starting."

"And the weapon?"

"Most peculiar. Iphicrates was killed with an axe."

"An axe!" I said. This was exceptional. No common dagger for this murderer. A few barbarian peoples favored the axe as a weapon, mostly in the East. "Was it a woodman's axe, or a soldier's dolabra?"

"Neither. Those have straight or gently convex edges. This weapon has a rather narrow and very deeply curved edge, almost a crescent."

"What sort of axe is that?" I wondered.

"Come with me," he said. I followed him from the room, mystified. As far as I knew, he had left his extensive collection of weapons back in Rome. There was a great deal of subdued muttering from the crowd outside as it drew aside for us. Someone fell in beside us.

"You've found congenial activity, I see." It was Julia.

"Yes. Extraordinary luck, don't you think? Where is Fausta?"

"She and Berenice went back to the Palace. A murder scene is not the proper place for royalty."

"I hope they don't start blabbing when they get there. I want to persuade Ptolemy to assign me to the investigation tomorrow."

"Decius, must I remind you that this is Egypt, not Rome?"

"Everybody wants to tell me that. It's not as if this were really an independent nation. Everybody knows that Rome calls all the tunes here."

"And you're with the diplomatic mission. You have no business interfering in an internal police matter."

"But I feel I owe Iphicrates something. If it hadn't been for him, I'd be listening to a discussion on acatalepsia right now."

"You're just bored," she insisted.

"Utterly." An inspiration seized me. "I'll tell you what: How would you like to help me in this?"

She paused. "Help you?" she said suspiciously.

"Of course. I'll need an assistant. A Roman assistant. And it wouldn't hurt to have one who can talk to the highborn ladies of Alexandria and the court."

"I'll consider it," she said coolly. I knew I had her. She was usually eager to take part in my disreputable snooping, but back in Rome it was not a respectable activity for a patrician lady. Here she could do as she liked, within reason.

"Good," I said. "You might start by getting Berenice to persuade Papa to assign me to the case."

"I knew you had some low motive. Where are we going?" We were in a wing of the Museum I hadn't yet seen, a gallery of statues and paintings, fitfully illuminated by lamps.

"Asklepiodes has something to show us," I said.

"The axe has been little used as a weapon in modern times," he said. "Although in antiquity it was not considered to be an unfit weapon even for noblemen. In Book Thirteen of the Iliad, the Trojan hero Peisandros drew an axe from behind his shield to engage Menelaos, not that it did him much good."

"I remember that part," I said. "Menelaos stabbed him through the top of his nose and both his eyeballs fell bleeding to the dust beside his feet."

"That would be the part you remember," Julia said.

"I love those passages. Asklepiodes, why the art gallery?"

"In art, the axe is usually depicted as a characteristic weapon of the Amazons."

"Surely," I said, "you aren't suggesting that Iphicrates was done in by an Amazon?"

"I rather think not. But look here." He had stopped before a large, splendid black-figure vase standing on a pedestal that identified it as the work of the famous vase-painter Timon. It depicted a battle between Greeks and Amazons, and Asklepiodes pointed to one of those martial ladies, mounted, dressed in tunic and Phrygian bonnet, raising on high a long-handled axe to smite a Greek who was dressed solely in a large, crested helmet and armed with spear and shield.

Julia fetched a lamp from a wall sconce and brought it close so that we could study the weapon. Although the handle was long, the head was quite compact, rather narrow and widening slightly to a half-circular cutting edge. The opposite side of the head bore a sharp, stubby spike.

"It's something like the sacrificial axe the flamine's assistant uses to stun the larger sacrificial animals," Julia noted.

"Ours aren't quite that deeply curved on the edge," I said.

"In parts of the Orient," Asklepiodes said, "axes of this very form are still in use for religious purposes."

"Have you seen any here in Alexandria?" I asked him.

He shook his head. "No. But there is certainly at least one such axe in the city."

We took our leave of him and returned to our litter, where we found the bearers sound asleep, a defect I quickly remedied. We crawled into the litter and lay back on the cushions.

"Why would anyone murder a scholar like Iphicrates?" Julia wondered sleepily.

"That's what I intend to find out," I told her. "I hope it isn't anything as common as a jealous husband."

"Your superiors won't like you taking a hand in this, you know. It could complicate their work."

"I don't care," I said. "I want to find out who did this and see that he's punished."

"Why?" she demanded. "Oh, I know that you're bored, but you could cure that by escorting me on a boat trip down the Nile to the Elephantine Island, showing me the sights along the way. You have no real interest in Alexandria and you certainly didn't like Iphicrates. What is it?"

I always hated it when she was so penetrating and insightful. "It's nothing you need to bother yourself about," I insisted.

"Come on, tell me." She sounded amused. "If I'm to be your assistant, I want to know."

"Well," I said uneasily, "it's something about the place. Not the Museum or Library so much, but the Temple itself."

"And?" she prodded.

"And it's wrong to commit murder in a temple. Even the place where Iphicrates was killed is a part of the Temple complex."

Her eyebrows went up. "Even a foreign temple?"

"The Muses are legitimate goddesses," I maintained. "We worship them in Rome."

"I never thought you all that pious, Decius," she said.

"This Temple is different," I stubbornly insisted.

She lay back on the cushions. "I'll accept that. But I want you to show me this Temple." She said nothing more the rest of the way back to the Palace.

I had more than enough to occupy my mind.