Augustus Road

A few days later, Lepidus and Cleopatra, along with the fleet and two legions, sailed west from Sepi Island to Alexandria to help Caesar.

At the same time, in the city, Diotusus and Motamenes came to the prison of the palace together. Scipio was lying there exhausted. Seeing the two men shaking the keys, he thought they were here to release him, but soon they walked over and came to the cell next door, where Septimius, who killed the two consuls, was imprisoned. The old soldier was sitting cross-legged on the dirty ground, catching all kinds of reptiles with relish.

"Septimius, I am here to fulfill your reward on behalf of His Majesty the Pharaoh."

"Now I want 15,000 drachmas of silver to offset the torture I have suffered in this damn prison." The other party said hoarsely.

"That's entirely possible, but we can add another 30,000 silver coins, on the condition that you serve as an advisor to besiege Caesar in the theater." The eunuch said with his hands behind his back.

Septimius chuckled, and he asked the eunuch in return, "I only need the original bounty now, and take my wife and children to Cyrenaica for refuge and live a carefree life. Now you are actually giving me this money again, asking me to do something that will never be redeemed - you Egyptians can't win this war." "As long as the power of His Majesty the Pharaoh is there, victory will still belong to us. Caesar now has only a few soldiers, and our army can completely chop off his head before his reinforcements arrive." Motanmenis said desperately.

So Septimius blinked his eyes. It means that this reward is not bad after all, and it can be considered.

"Keep an eye on this old thing!" The eunuch reminded Diotus before leaving.

It was afternoon. Septimius, guarded by many soldiers of the Gorta Legion, ran around Caesar's fortification camp and then made a suggestion: Caesar can build fortifications to defend, and you can also build higher fortifications to attack them.

Then, Septimius circled the city again and pointed out that the alley should be blocked with a horizontal wall. That residential house should be demolished, and which streets should be buried. Which ones must be cleared, and then he said that a thousand soldiers who are good at fighting from the Gorta Legion should be drawn out and formed into a separate brigade. They will be stationed in the central square within the area I designated as a reserve army. The rest of the mob of rioters should be dismissed by me. They have no useful effect except blocking their own attack route. Under the guidance of this old consultant, the streets leading to Caesar's camp were instantly unblocked, and the javelins and spears made in the Great Temple of Isis, as well as the stone bullets that the slaves had sharpened with their teeth, were all loaded on mule carts. Then the mule carts and mule workshops were connected in series with ropes and chains, rumbling through the straight streets and delivering ammunition directly to the front line. The Egyptian army also built a large number of siege towers and catapults, and began to shoot at Caesar's camps without interruption.

It seems that the Egyptians learn very quickly in war!

Through fierce shooting and cannibalization, the Egyptians actually took down several small strongholds of Caesar two days later, because after all, Caesar had too few men. It was a bit stretched, and defense began to become difficult.

At this time. Ptolemy XIII himself also exerted his strength. He smashed and melted all the valuables in the palace, distributed them to soldiers, civilians and armed slaves, and promised that after killing Caesar, he would give these people more gifts, and the fighting enthusiasm of the whole city was aroused again. Then, some engineers also proposed a strategy of cutting off water supply. They proposed that the water source of Alexandria City was mainly provided by the canal in the south. Residents dug many canals from the canal and extended them to every corner of the city. Rich families had water pipes to supply water, and the water became very clear after filtration, but poor families could only drink sewage mixed with mud directly. Now as long as we cut off the canal, we can kill Caesar with thirst in it.

This group of people thought and did it. They first cut off all the canals leading to the triangle area defended by Caesar's legion, whether it was open or hidden, and completely drained the water. Then this group of people with a sense of humor finally left a canal, but used water-drawing equipment to lead it to the ocean, causing the seawater to flow back and pour into it.

"The water is salty!" With this frightened cry, the panic of water shortage instantly spread to all parts of Caesar's camp.

Then, the water they could get became more and more salty and unpalatable.

The soldiers and centurions panicked, and then complained, blaming the dictator for leading them to this deadly place out of vanity. If the situation continued to deteriorate, the entire army would be buried in this hellhole, so they should abandon the camp by boat and go to Pharos Island to meet with Hitius' fleet.

Caesar was very calm. The worse the situation he faced, the calmer he became. He first asked the soldiers to row boats to the island with fresh water in the ocean to get water, and then encouraged all the centurions to lead the soldiers to dig wells to drink, and said, "The land near the ocean has many rivers flowing into the sea, so there is a lot of fresh water underground. These Egyptians used to be too superstitious about river water and turned a blind eye to the clear water under their feet. This is their stupidity, which naturally also makes our army wise."

Fortunately, since the restoration of the Pied Piper, Egypt has never been able to find the money to build a navy, so Ptolemy XIII's royal dock only had some light reed boats, which could not block Caesar on the sea and could only send ships. Hoping for the natural wind direction, Caesar's subordinates first went through hardships and brought some fresh water by ship from a distant island. Caesar distributed all of it to the working soldiers, and then the soldiers mustered up their energy and dug wells frantically. However, after working in the middle of the night, no water source was found underground in the camp.

Caesar was a little panicked now, and soon the soldiers of the Tenth Legion found a simple method, which was to use leather bags to store the salty drinking water, and then put it in the sun in the Alexandria camp to dry it. Knowing that the most abundant thing in this city is the unobstructed sun, the sea salt slowly seeped out along the leather. The soldier drank the remaining water that became dilute and could finally swallow it, but there was only a water channel. The drinking water needs of more than 3,000 horses could not be met at all, and the situation was still very embarrassing.

In addition, many indigenous people included in the camp were also incited by the Pharaoh and many nobles. On the surface, they were polite to Caesar's soldiers, but secretly they still tried every means to reveal the information of the Tenth Legion. Soon after the Gorta Legion learned of this, they intensified their efforts and used screw pumps to pour more seawater into the canal, so that the Romans could no longer produce fresh water.