There's no escape...

I went by the library and picked up some books and, oh look!  There's a new Batman graphic novel on the new shelf.  DontmindifIdo...  Little summer escapist reading never hurt any...

Oh.

Spoiler warning

Ok, I'll give you the reference to the Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, the baddies allude to in an ah-hah-Mr-Bond-now-we-kill-you sequence but then, 

"The Court has an affinity for classical Antiquity.  In ancient Greece, there was a tradition of placing coins beneath the corpse's tongue before burial.  Supposedly to pay for passage into Hades.  The rich sometimes had their coins made a metal called electrum, a highly conductive alloy of silver and copper.  In this man's body, I found a significant amount of electrum.  Not just in his blood, but in his cells... from a depoisit embedded in his tooth.  In the shape of a tiny owl...  He carried his ferryman's coin with him all the time, for years."  Aaand this is apparently the reason why the baddie could reanimate himself.  Right.  Ok.  Cute use of an obscure bit of trivia.  

Wait, there's more?!  Batman knocks out Nightwing's tooth to reveal the same electrum coin, "You were supposed to be one...  In pre-modern times, potential gladiators were sometimes escorted to the colliseums by parades of performers.  Jesters and acrobats.  An an ancient version of the--circus."  Nightwing, of course, was taken in by Batman after his circus parents were killed in an "accident."

Guess there's just no getting away from Latin, huh?  ;)

Source:
Snyder, Scott et al.  Batman volume 1: The Court of the Owls. New York: DC Comics, 2012.