"Alas, alas, every ship that is in the sea has made himself rich because of her treasures, and in a moment she was reduced to ruins." —The account of the book of Revelation after the fall of Babylon

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For several days, the port of Cagliari in Sardinia was busy with sails and oars, shuttling back and forth on the sea, and overloaded ships were constantly running aground on the side of the trestle, but the merchants were still jumping to their feet, asking the workers to load more grain there in exchange for balance.

The owners of the fleet laughed and began to squeeze more intermediate gains, marking the cabins with ranks, and charging different prices for different areas, whether they were loaded with people or food.

The owner of the manor also laughed, they dumped the wheat at two or even three times the price of the previous year, and they were not responsible for transportation and sales, anyway, the merchants directly put the money and goods in the manor, and then directly pulled the wheat, is there any easier and more comfortable than this? Many of the wealthy manor owners considered buying villas and apartments in the city of Cagliari, and they needed to paint the landscape in their future houses, build fireplaces, dress them with seasonal flowers, and put abundant poppies and mead in front of the altars of their ancestors and gods, so that they could supervise the work of slaves on the country estates during the busy farming season, and they would take their families and high-ranking servants to the city to stay in the city during the off-season, where there would be a variety of entertainment and social activities.

But after a few days, the merchants who were most eager to laugh could not laugh anymore. Their original jihua was to unload the wheat at the port docks near the city of Rome. Enter the warehouse. Waiting for the Senate to send a commissioner to pay a large price for the acquisition, anyway, the treasury is now very full because of the Mithridates War, and it can also save a lot of money by handing it over to the acquisition commissioner directly in the surrounding area.

However, when they docked their fleet at Ostia on the Tyrrhenian side (where Ostia Avenue led to the harbor), Aditya, Avenionium, and even further afield, Salini, they found that there had already been another large fleet coming down from the north to the south. Concentrated in these regions, the grain was sold at a much lower price than theirs, and many of the small caravans in the area frantically went to the city of Rome to resell it as soon as they received it, and the commissioners of the Senate did not see even a shadow of it—the cost of the journey was also very valuable.

"It's wheat from the Etrunian region!"

Before Catiline's death, Calabis and a group of knights, chambers of commerce, and freedmen set out to establish an "economic community" in the area, supported by the big benefactor Crassus, who mined the local iron ore, or bought a large number of high-quality iron farming tools and utensils directly from the Gallic Celts with wine, and shared fertilizer, roads, and transportation ships and vehicles. When Sardinia was still a rush to buy, it quickly rushed south with the collective harvest of wheat. Don't go to Rome first, and "intercept" the Sardinian caravans directly in these areas.

Sure enough, the caravan from Sardinia panicked, and some of them decided to break the ship, turn the big ship into a small boat, and hired a lot of manpower to carry grain along the Tiber River to the city of Rome, but the river was notoriously inadequate and had insufficient docking, and there was only one area that could carry large-scale transportation, that is, the "Great Warehouse of the Calabis River" converted from the ruins of the original Valin apartment, but it was also magically empty, and no one loaded or unloaded goods there, let alone the operation of the warehouse and crane, only the lighthouse "Welcome Paruma." The words are still shining.

At the same time, the Etrunian wheat that poured in from all over the city gates quickly occupied the markets of Rome just when the Sardinian caravans were about to cry without tears, and the commissioners appeared at this time, but they were obviously not interested in the soaring prices of Sardinian wheat after the sea and futures rush purchases, and they did not bother to touch the clay pots marked there.

Within a market day, the wheat in Sardinia fell sharply, and many caravans could only sell ships full of grain at very low prices in Ostia and Aditya. Of course, the main force that went to buy wheat from Sardinia was still the Etrunian merchants, who were now not short of money—the city of Rome was saturated with grain reserves, the prices were fair, and the fathers of the Senate were satisfied, and were ready to sign a long-term grain contract with the villa farms there.

As for the Sardinian wheat, which was forced to be sold at the price of the jump, it was transported by the accomplices of Calabis to the barns of the port of Brindisi, and they spent several times the price of the cheap wheat to build a large number of warehouses in the harbor, but not the Colosseum and the theater, but the warehouses with complete facilities.

Because Pompey was about to land here with the veterans of ten legions, the non-military range of the Roman city, no army was allowed to cross the Rubicon in the north, and the port of Brindisi in the south, but the 60,000 to 100,000 soldiers were not mercury, and they would disappear when they landed, and they had to stay in this harbor to wait for land resettlement and pensions, and most of the food and drink were the responsibility of the state.

At that time, there was another wave of dumping, and it was cheap dumping, and Calabis had already calculated that in the ancient Roman Mediterranean, a vehicle with an ordinary capacity, full of wheat, would cost a hundred cesdes for every hundred more stadias traveled. And like me, if you have information and hoard haode in advance, even if the price is half of the other party, it is also a big profit.

Hmph, how can the high-priced grain that has been transferred from other places to the outside world be compared to me, using Etrunian wheat to crush Sardinia, and then using Sardinian wheat to crush other places!

When autumn came, everything returned to the Orfilenu estate, staircases, bronze vessels, furniture, carpets, frescoes, wine vessels, and slaves and peasants. Calabis sat comfortably on the stone chairs of the flower gallery, drinking the cool mint water, this manor is good, the wind is beautiful, it rains when it should rain, he also wants to buy a place in an area next to the lake or the sea, but now is not the time to talk about the retreat of the rapids. He supervised with Habaruka, and the craftsmen were subdividing the fields, sowing thyme, poppies, clovers, and bee flowers at intervals, and building beehouses and beehives around the courtyards and estates, while the Habaruka began to lay out clay urns for the cultivation of snails, which were foamed with wheat flour and grape juice, and placed freely in the brooks and in the shade of the trees, and the snails liked such a shady and humid environment, and the pools were stocked not only with fingerlings, but also with fat geese, and when they were ripe, they kept filling their mouths with food and wine. Then sell its most delicious liver at a high price.

The little widow Yulia was in a good mood and not good, she felt that the man had both returned the manor and taken it away. As she was wiping down the furniture and utensils, she suddenly saw in the suitcase a toga left by his father, a black and blue crunch made of thick wool, the ceremonial garment necessary for Roman men, as important as the suit now.

She unfolded the folded haode robe on the carpet, and stroked the fine folds on it, remembering that his father had been deprived of his nobility by his grandfather, so he left the robe in Ophelenu, and of course the family left her, and left the island of Minor Arrod, where Zuihou died in the war.

Under the window under the semi-vault of the building, Yulia held a robe, looking at the carabis who was commanding under the flower gallery and looked like a master, and her heart was a little confused, you must know that the return on investment of Habaruka in the fleet has entered more than a dozen Talents at once, but this Calabis still looks dissatisfied, he has destroyed most of the caravans on the island, and is still planning the future blueprint of the Ophelenu Manor, Habaruka listens to him, and the new craftsmen, farmers, slaves and even cooks in the manor begin to listen to him, It's a bit of a no-brainer!

In the golden September sun, Yulia gently gestured with her hand to the figure of Calabis and to his father's toga robe, and then her eyes were fixed on the box above the suitcase, where King Numa's ring happened. (To be continued......)