Senators, judges, advocates, Consuls, and Praetors could be bribed with articles of _vertu_ as well as with money.
There are eleven separate stories told of these robberies.

I will give very shortly the details of one or two.

There was one Marcus Heius, a rich citizen of Messana, in whose house Verres took great delight.
Messana itself was very useful to him, and the Mamertines, as the people of Messana were called were his best friends in all Sicily: for he made Messana the depot of his plunder, and there he caused to be built at the expense of the Government an enormous ship called the _Cybea_,[126] in which his treasures were carried out of the island.

He therefore specially favored Messana, and the district of Messana was supposed to have been scourged by him with lighter rods than those used elsewhere in Sicily.

But this man Heius had a chapel, very sacred, in which were preserved four specially beautiful images.