were compelled to supply their rulers with a fixed quantity of corn at
prices lower than could have been obtained in the open market. And they
would probably have been ready to secure the good will of a governor who
fancied himself a connoisseur in art with handsome presents from their
museums and picture galleries. But the exactions of Verres exceeded all
bounds both of custom and of endurance. The story of how he dealt with
the wheat-growers of the province is too tedious and complicated to be
told in this place. Let it suffice to say that he enriched himself and
his greedy troop of followers at the cost of absolute ruin both to the
cultivators of the soil and to the Roman capitalists who farmed this
part of the public revenue. As to the way in which he laid his hands on
the possessions of temples and of private citizens, his doings were
emphatically summed up by his prosecutor when he came, as we shall
afterwards see, to be put upon his trial. "I affirm that in the whole of
Sicily, wealthy and old-established province as it is, in all those
towns, in all those wealthy homes, there was not a single piece of
silver plate, a single article of Corinthian or Delian ware, a single
jewel or pearl, a single article of gold or ivory, a single picture,
whether on panel or on canvas, which he did not hunt up and examine,
and, if it pleased his fancy, abstract. This is a great thing to say,
you think. Well, mark how I say it. It is not for the sake of rhetorical
exaggeration that I make this sweeping assertion, that I declare that
this fellow did not leave a single article of the kind in the whole
province. I speak not in the language of the professional accuser but in
plain Latin. Nay, I will put it more clearly still: in no single private
house, in no town; in no place, profane or even sacred; in the hands of
no Sicilian, of no citizen of Rome, did he leave a single article,
public or private property, of things profane or things religious, which
came under his eyes or touched his fancy."

Some of the more remarkable of these acts of spoliation it may be worth
while to relate. A certain Heius, who was at once the wealthiest and
most popular citizen of Messana, had a private chapel of great antiquity
in his house, and in it four statues of the very greatest value. There
was a Cupid by Praxiteles, a replica of a famous work which attracted
visitors to the uninteresting little town of Thespiae in Boeotia; a
Hercules from the chis