Book 4
16
Though I was aware of and had given weight to these considerations, still, O judges, I trusted myself to Heius. I produced him at the first pleading; and indeed I did it without any danger, for what answer could Heius give even if he turned out a dishonest man, and unlike himself? Could he say that these statues were at his house, and not with Verres? How could he say anything of that sort? If he were the basest of men, and were inclined to lie most shamelessly, he would say this; that he had had them for sale, and that he had sold them at the price he wanted for them. The man the most noble in all his city, who was especially anxious that you should have a high opinion of his conscientiousness and of his worth, says first, that he spoke in Verres's praise by the public authority of his city, because that commission had been given to him; secondly; that he had not had these things for sale, and that, if he had been allowed to do what he wished, he could never have been induced by any terms to sell those things which were in his private chapel, having been left to him and handed down to him from his ancestors.
