Poirot failed to share his friend's amusement.
"What I understand you to mean is that in physical appearance I do not resemble a Hercules?"
Dr. Burton's eyes swept over Hercule Poirot, over his small neat person attired in striped trousers, correct black jacket and natty bow tie, swept up from his patent leather shoes to his eggshaped head and the immense moustache that adorned his upper lip.
"Frankly, Poirot," said Dr. Burton, "you don't! I gather," he added, "that you've never had much time to study the classics?"
"That is so."
"Pity. Pity. You've missed a lot. Everyone should be made to study the classics if I had my way."
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
"Eh bien, I have got on very well without them."
"Got on! Got on? It's not a question of getting on. That's the wrong view altogether. The classics aren't a ladder leading to quick success, like a modern correspondence course! It's not a man's [sic] working hours that are important-it's his leisure hours. That's the mistake we all make."
Agatha Christie The Labors of Hercules (New York, Berkley Books, 1984 [1939] p. 2
Judith de Luce, Department of Classics, Miami University, Oxford, OH