Cicero said: “You did not complain?”

“Who to? The governor?” Sthenius laughed. “No, senator. I was alive, wasn’t I? If he had just left it at that, I would have swallowed my losses, and you would never have heard a squeak from me. But collecting can be a sickness, and I tell you what: your Governor Verres has it badly. You remember those statues in the town square?”

“Indeed I do. Three very fine bronzes. But you are surely not telling me he stole those as well?”

“He tried. This was on his third day under my roof. He asked me whose they were. I told him they were the property of the town and had been for centuries. You know they are four hundred years old? He said he would like permission to remove them to his residence in Syracuse, also as a loan, and asked me to approach the council. By then I knew what kind of a man he was, so I said I could not, in all honor, oblige him. He left that night. A few days after that, I received a summons for trial on the fifth day of October, on a charge of forgery.”

“Who brought the charge?”

“An enemy of mine named Agathinus. He is a client of Verres himself. My first thought was to face him down. I have nothing to fear as far as my honesty goes. I have never forged a document in my life. But then I heard the judge was to be Verres, and that he had already fixed on the punishment. I was to be whipped in front of the whole town for my insolence.”

“And so you fled?”

“That same night, I took a boat along the coast to Messana.”

Cicero rested his chin in his hand and contemplated Sthenius. I recognized that gesture. He was weighing up the witness. “You say the hearing was on the fifth of last month. Have you heard what happened?”

“That is why I am here. I was convicted in my absence, sentenced to be flogged-and fined five thousand. But there is worse than that. At the hearing, Verres claimed fresh evidence had been produced against me, this time of spying for the rebels in Spain. There is to be a new trial in Syracuse on the first day of December.”