Kitap 4
139
And after I said that, such a groaning ensued at the sight and mention of the statue, that it appeared to have been placed in the senate-house as a monument of his wickednesses and not of his services. Then every one for himself, as fast as each could manage to speak, began to give me information of those things which I have just now mentioned; to tell me that the city was plundered—the temples stripped of their treasures—that of the inheritance of Heraclius, which he had adjudged to the men of the palaestra, he had taken by far the greatest share himself; and indeed, that they could not expect that he should care for the men of the palaestra, when he had taken away even the god who was the inventor of oil; that that statue had neither been made at the public expense, nor erected by public authority, but that those men who had been the sharers in the plunder of the inheritance of Heraclius, had had it made and placed where it was; and that those same men had been the deputies at Rome, who had been his assistants in dishonesty, his partners in his thefts and the witnesses of his debaucheries; and that therefore I ought the less to wonder if they were wanting to the unanimity of the deputies and to the safety of Sicily.
