vases, the purple hangings, what slaves he chooses. Then everything else is sold by auction. How he divided the spoil with the Syracusans, and then quarrelled with them, and how he lied as to the share taken by himself, will all be found in Cicero's narrative. Heraclius was of course ruined. For the stories of Epicrates and Sopater I must refer the reader to the oration. In that of Sopater there is the peculiarity that Verres managed to get paid by everybody all round. The story of Sthenius is so interesting that I cannot pass it by. Sthenius was a man of wealth and high standing, living at Therma in Sicily, with whom Verres often took up his abode; for, as governor, he travelled much about the island, always in pursuit of plunder. Sthenius had had his house full of beautiful things. Of all these Verres possessed himself--some by begging, some by demanding, and some by absolute robbery. Sthenius, grieved as he was to find himself pillaged, bore all this. The man was Roman Prætor, and injuries such as these had to be endured. At Therma, however, in the public place of the city, there were some beautiful statues. For these Verres longed, and desired his host to get them for him. Sthenius declared that this was impossible. The statues had, under peculiar circumstances, been recovered by Scipio Africanus from Carthage, and been restored by the Roman General to the Sicilians, from whom they had been taken, and had been erected at Therma. There was a peculiarly beautiful figure of Stesichorus, the poet, as an old man bent double, with a book in his hand--a very glorious work of art; and there was a goat--in bronze probably--as to which Cicero is at the pains of telling us that even he, unskilled as he was in such matters, could see its charms. No one had sharper eyes for such pretty ornaments than Cicero, or a more decided taste for them. But as Hortensius, his rival and opponent in this case, had taken a marble sphinx from Verres, he thought it expedient to show how superior he was to such matters. There was probably something of joke in this, as his predilections would no doubt be known to those he was addressing.[117]