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.