Augustus Road

But what Demetrius thought was the best idea obviously frightened his master. Demetrius still refused to give up. He pointed to the cloak of Alexander the Great hanging on the wall and persuaded him: "Master, is it possible for you to In your eyes, is this just a ostentatious decoration? A trophy that is indispensable in the triumph? Those in Rome will only falsely praise you, but they will never want King Philip (Alexander) in Rome. Father) and his son, they only liked the appearance of a figure like Scipio who trembled in the Senate's cross-examination."

"Demetrius, my son, you are crazy." Pompey directly rejected his proposal, then looked at the emperor's cloak and said to himself: "At the age of thirty-three, he reached the pinnacle of glory in his career of conquest. He died without any regrets, and I am almost forty-five years old. After all, I will not be him. Rome cannot have Alexander the Great. This is the tragedy of Rome, but it is also its success. I will always be there. Living in such a world, we should take it for granted.”

Then, his strong body stood up from the armchair, sighed, touched Demetrius's hair to express his intimacy, and then asked the Jewish slave if there was any other feasible way.

"There is another one, give up the grand triumphal ceremony, give up the identity of the legion, and go to the city of Rome to run for the next consulship (Roman law stipulates that the triumphal general is not allowed to enter the city within the specified time, so he cannot run for the consulship), After taking office, he will use his power to pass the land plan and win the support of the retired soldiers. As long as he controls the political and military morale, he will be able to achieve success and suppress the ambitions of Caesar and Crassus. "As long as Demetrius is not in front of Adiana. , you can regain your clear thinking and mind.

But the master just stared at the cloak and sighed in silence. He was really unwilling to give up this great triumph, as if his life could only have practical value in gaining this kind of false glory.

"That is, before Crassus's inspection team comes, part of the money should be distributed to the soldiers, part of it should be sent to the city of Rome for bribes, and an appropriate amount should be retained and prepared to be handed over to the treasury. Only in this way can we guarantee your great triumph. Generals are unreliable." Finally, in order to please his master, Demetrius replied in a lonely and heavy tone. He knew very well that even if this method succeeded, most of Pompey's wealth would be wiped out in this war. No matter how much energy and money it would cost to propose the distribution of land to veterans, his master would no longer be able to take the lead in the battles in Rome, and his fate would be exactly the same as that tuna.

Is this the irony of fate?

Demetrius's last resort suggestion finally satisfied Pompey. Yes, he still couldn't do without the feeling of being sought after. This was the meaning of his life.

There was a noise on the deck. Demetrius opened the door of the bridge room. Pompey walked out in a loose robe. He saw that both sides of the bay of Ponticabion were filled with white tents and smoke. There are also trenches, wooden palisades, and archery towers that completely separate the two Roman armies, as well as the tense situation of the soldiers on both sides. Pirates and the new model troops who have turned into bandits are like a fish in water. Both Pompey and Petnaeus are very interested in They issued recruitment orders, and they put on the red cloaks of the Roman legions again, and continued to receive salary promotions in a competition with each other.

As for the bay, it was full of various floating objects, as well as the gray and swollen corpses of people and animals. This was a masterpiece of purple-sail pirate attacks and plunder. The whole situation was worse than Pompey imagined. Although the Eighth Legion has landed, all the supplies previously had been robbed by the Thirteenth Legion. The baggage of the Pontic Bronze Shield Army was seized, and the income of the entire island city market town was looted. Now it is all hoarded in the Acropolis, Petnev. Si was sitting in the city of Ponticabion and did not pay attention to Pompey's edict at all. There was no way, there were too many veterans and officers in the Thirteenth Legion who hated Pompey. Pompey had thought that the victory was imminent, so he had some selfish motives and asked Demetrius to reduce and expel a group of soldiers in order to save costs. They were rogue or disobedient people, and as a result, these people now all went to the Thirteenth Army Corps.

What's even worse is that the Zifan pirates who wanted to surrender seemed to have forgotten their previous promises. They dedicated themselves to attacking their own lines of communication all day long, but they never bothered the transport ships of the Thirteenth Army. Pompey only made a fuss. The troops arriving on the island could be supplied along the Sinop, Colchis, and overland routes to the Cimmerian Strait. Ten bushels of wheat could often be transported to the mouth of the Eighth Army. When he was young, Triali kept asking for wheat, wine, olive oil, blankets, military shoes, pack horses and mules, in short, he wanted everything!

Yes, this terrible situation must be worthy of a big talk from the guys in purple robes at the Temple of Concord!

"Gnaeus Pompey has become a dangerous person now. What exactly does he want to do? What does he want to achieve? Sorry, everyone. Even the fortune teller of the Temple of Jupiter cannot give us a reassuring answer. We only know that he has eight to ten legions, twelve kingdoms and the loyalty of three hundred tribes in Asia Minor. He can arbitrarily decide the life and death and honor and disgrace of a monarch. Then he asked the city of Rome to give him a second great triumphal treatment. He also used the enthusiasm of the people and his power to seize the merits of other provincial legions. He is too greedy! He is similar to the crocodiles raised by my brother. Once he opens his bloody mouth to eat, he will never stop in the water." In front of the half-moon rostrum of the Senate, the long-lost "Tuna" Luculas suddenly appeared and began to deliver a speech against Pompey.

Afterwards, Lucullus' speech was applauded by Cato the Younger and his friends, and the senators who supported Pompey gathered around Cicero, constantly promoting Pompey's great achievements in suppressing pirates, "Doesn't such a general deserve the love of the people?"

"The people, especially those mobs living in the 'floating islands' (Roman's name for high-rise low-end apartments), love him a little too much. My friend Cicero, don't forget the lessons of the Gracchi brothers and Catiline, and don't put the city of Rome in front of the whirlwind of ** , to be honest, I don't want the great Pompey to lose his integrity in his later years and become the second Marius. "Cato the Younger stood up and warned loudly, "Besides, Pompey has serious economic problems. He may have concealed the huge profits he and his army made in this war by using some clumsy means. When a concubine of Mithridates handed over a treasury of Pontus with a total of 6,000 talents to him, he later announced that the treasury was a fake and was full of stones and iron. Is there anything more incredible than this?" (To be continued.)