Note iii-32 — Chapter III · PROFESSIONAL ETHICS

A singular parallel presents itself in ancient Athenian history, where Alcibiades and his friends were charged, as Plutarch relates, with mutilating the images of Mercury, on a certain night. When one of the informers was asked how he managed to recognize the features of the accused in the darkness, he answered,—“I saw them by the light of the moon,”—a palpable misstatement, as the affair happened at the time of a new moon which gave practically no light. This anecdote, however, could hardly have prompted Lincoln to consult an almanac in the Armstrong case, because he had not read Plutarch’s Lives at the time of that trial, and only did so two years later.