"Friendship can only exist between good people." - Cicero, On Friendship

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Hearing his brother's words, Agrippa paused, but he didn't expect that what he said when he was a child, his brother still remembered it clearly.

"For a mechanic or an architect, the most important soul is not skill, but responsibility, yes Agrippa, your most outstanding virtue is your sense of responsibility - and now, take it out, because what is before you is not the choice of Leo or Turinus, but the gains and losses of the two regions of Epirus and Illyria, and the safety and death of the seven legions." These were Lucius's last words, and he walked up to Agrippa and held the letter of appointment before his eyes.

In the end, Agrippa still couldn't let go, this heavy responsibility, just because his heart was really noble, he was not an empty person, so he could only slowly, take the letter of appointment from his brother's hand, "Wait until I hold the line of defense of the Apsuus River, and the high priest will come here next year, and then decide on my punishment." ”

Soon Agrippa, who succeeded him as governor and commander, rode through all the camps, and gathered all the senior centurions, who stood before the group and said earnestly, "Our commander has been dismissed and exiled. ”

Some centurions had already learned the news from their letters, while others were kept in the dark, and in any case, when Agrippa said it bluntly, the effect was explosive, with many people stunned and many with uncertain faces. Nobody knows. Where did the fourteenth, eighteenth, forty-second, and forty-third numbered legions end? As for the three recruit corps, they were even more panicked.

"But fear not, we're not being condemned to rebel status right now." After saying that, Agrippa and Lucius put the letter of appointment, the seal, and the edict of the Senate encouraging the battle on the table in turn, so that everyone could see clearly, "Our legion will not be disbanded. But if we don't fight well in the future, it's hard to say. ”

"Also, the high priest's five hundred tarrants, and a large quantity of instruments, grain, and meat, will soon be brought here in the winter breeze, and I am his representative, and I can swear to all the centurions and all the soldiers that the high priest will never abandon us, and that we will soon have a rich reward and a pension." Lucius stepped forward and slapped his chest with one hand. Assured everyone.

So, the veteran centurions did not delay too long. They soon surrounded Agrippa and expressed their willingness to obey the high priest and his commands, and to thwart Brutus' attack with all their hearts.

Soon, as the new commander, Agrippa began to make an official tour of the winter camp with the cavalry guards and flags, and snowflakes fell in the sky, which was also rare in Epirus and Greece, and many soldiers put on their leggings and boots and stood in a line to be read. "The severe cold, the defense of death, as well as the excellent and strong barriers, equipment will be the magic weapon to defeat the enemy. It may be strange to some tribunes that the city of Bugarotum, though previously fortified by Lord Caesar, could not hold the line of the Apsus on its own, so we needed a larger and more complete system of ramparts, and the winter camp guarded by wooden fences and moats alone was not enough to resist Brutus, and their legions had more battle-hardened veterans, were more supported by Greek cities, and their morale was higher. So now in order to be safe, I divided all the armies, my brother Lucius took four old legions, divided into two echelons, and took turns in the Apsuus River to resist Brutus's attack, the first echelon fought in formation, the second echelon remained in the winter camp to standby, to prevent the enemy from detouring, and then I personally led the three corps of recruits, along Bugalotum, towards the sides of the mountain to build fortified pillboxes, once this project was completed, we could guard until the spring of the following year. ”

This was Agrippa's strategy, and he soon put on the cloak worn by ordinary soldiers, and asked all the tribunes and centurions to do the same as him, with shovels, and began to dig trenches and cut down trees in Bugalotum, and then to build a single wall of earth and bricks from the trenches, then to double walls, and then to set up separate camps at intervals for a small cavalry force. After arranging the plan and the supervision post, Agrippa hurried to the winter camp to supervise the feeding of the pack horses, the care of the sick and wounded, and constantly talking to the soldiers to comfort and encourage them.

At dusk, Agrippa, who endured extreme sleepiness and fatigue, rode his horse again, and came to the front line of his brother, and saw that the order was in order, and the soldiers' feelings were very stable, so he settled down, dismounted, and almost groped his way to the tent, wrapped himself in a blanket, and fell to the ground and fell into a sound dream.

Brutus's army, marching in long columns down the streets, to their left was the towering and steep cliffs of Corinth, and below them were the grey churning waters and steaming sea fog, and the snowflakes danced wildly between the sea and the sky, and plunged into the icy waters, and disappeared in an instant, and on the right were bare, equally steep hills, with the occasional squirrel of trees, and dilapidated little temples, on which they looked listlessly at the army of Roman and Greek winds.

In the temple complex of Delphi, Brutus ordered all the troops to stay and allow the Greek soldiers to enter and offer sacrifices, and the Aetolians were the most pious of the group, and they placed their horses and armor outside the temple, and bowed down in front of the statue of the sun god in a dense manner, and then they pleaded with the chief priests of the place, and finally when the Aetolians came out in procession, each of them broke off a branch from the laurel and olive tree in front of the temple, and stuck it in his hat.

"May Apollo, the god of medicine, bless us with victory on the battlefield and reunite with our families, wives and children."

At the same time, in the city of Rhodes in the Mediterranean, Cassiyo sat listlessly in a chair in the camp, he was commanding the only legion, hesitating whether to continue the pursuit of the Rhodesians, and now before him was a dilemma, with less than 5,000 troops at hand, it would probably be difficult to completely defeat the stubborn resistance of the Rhodesians; But if nothing is done, the Rhodes who still have a certain number of ships will definitely do something before the arrival of Li Bida's main fleet!

But when Cassiyo learned of the controversy at the previous Athenian military conference, he also laughed dumbly, "Marcus. Brutus, you have chosen a dead end, then let me accompany you to the end" (to be continued......)