transaction. Now there was a plan in vogue
for making things pleasant for a Proconsul retiring from his government,
in accordance with which a deputation would proceed from the province to
Rome to declare how well and kindly the Proconsul had behaved in his
government. The allies, even when they had been, as it were, skinned
alive by their governor, were constrained to send their deputations.
Deputations were got up in Sicily from Messana and Syracuse, and with
the others from Messana came this man Heius. Heius did not wish to tell
about his statues; but he was asked questions, and was forced to answer.
Cicero informs us how it all took place. "He was a man," he said--this
is what Cicero tells us that Heius said--"who was well esteemed in his
own country, and would wish you"--you judges--"to think well of his
religious spirit and of his personal dignity. He had come here to praise
Verres because he had been required to do so by his fellow-citizens. He,
however, had never kept things for sale in his own house; and had he
been left to himself, nothing would have induced him to part with the
sacred images which had been left to him by his ancestors as the
ornaments of his own chapel.[127] Nevertheless, he had come to praise
Verres, and would have held his tongue had it been possible."

Cicero finishes his catalogue by telling us of the manifold robberies
committed by Verres in Syracuse, especially from the temples of the
gods; and he begins his account of the Syracusan iniquities by drawing a
parallel between two Romans whose names were well known in that city:
Marcellus, who had besieged it as an enemy and taken it, and Verres, who
had been sent to govern it in peace. Marcellus had saved the lives of
the Syracusans; Verres had made the Forum to run with their blood. The
harbor which had held its own against Marcellus, as we may read in our
Livy, had been wilfully opened by Verres to Cilician pirates. This
Syracuse which had been so carefully preserved by its Roman conqueror,
the most beautiful of all the Greek cities on the face of the earth--so
beautiful that Marcellus had spared to it all its public ornaments--had
been stripped bare by Verres. There was the temple of Minerva from which
he had taken all the pictures. There were doors to this temple of such
beauty that books had been written about them. He stripped the ivory
ornaments from them, and the golden balls with which they had been made
splendid. He tore off from