" he lived among fallen empires, and in reading these languages that had not been spoken by the common man in centuries, he had all about him the ruins of language, evidence of toppled suburbs, grass growing among the mosaics, and voices that had been choked with poison, iron, age, or ash. He "

― M.T. Anderson , The Pox Party (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, #1)