But what Demetrius thought was the best thing to do, apparently frightened his master, and Demetrius did not give up, pointing to the cloak of Alexander the Great hanging on the wall, and persuaded: "Master, is this only a pompous ornament in your eyes?" A trophy that is dispensable in a triumphal ceremony? The people in Rome will only hypocritically praise you, but they will never want Philip (Alexander's father) and his son in Rome, they only like to have a figure like Scipio the Great who trembles in the cross-examination of the Senate. ”

"Dmitrius, my child, you are crazy." Pompey directly rejected his proposal, then looked at the Emperor's cloak, and said to himself: "He died at the age of thirty-three, when the conquest reached the peak of its glory, without a trace of regret, and I am almost forty-five years old, and I will not be him after all." The city of Rome could not produce Alexander the Great, this is the tragedy of the city of Rome, but it is also its success, I have always lived in such a shijie, I should be accustomed to it. ”

Then he rose from his chair with his strong body, sighed, touched Demetrius' hair, showed his intimacy, and then asked the Jewish slaves what else could be done.

"There is another one, give up the grand triumph, abandon the legion status, go to the city of Rome to run for the next re-elected consul (Roman law stipulates that triumphant generals are not allowed to enter the city within the specified time, and they cannot run for consul), and after taking office, they will use their power to pass land plans and win the support of veterans, as long as they hold the power and the hearts of the army, they can be invincible, and by the way, they can also suppress the new ambitions of Caesar and Crassus." As long as Demetrius was not in the presence of Adina, he was able to regain his clear thoughts and mind.

But the owner just stared at the cloak. Sighing silently. He was really unwilling to give up this great triumph. It was as if his life had only been of real value in the pursuit of such exaggerated glory.

"That is, before the Crassus's inspection team came, part of the money was distributed to the soldiers, and part of it was sent to the city of Rome to be bribed, and there must be a proper stay, ready to be handed over to the treasury, so as to ensure your great triumph, and your generals are unreliable." zuihou。 In order to delight his master, Demetrius replied in a lonely and heavy tone, knowing that even if this method was successful, Pompey's wealth in this war would be wiped out, and no matter how much effort and money it would take to propose the distribution of land to the veterans, his master would no longer be able to take the lead in the battle of Rome, and his fate would be exactly the same as that of the tuna.

Is this the irony, fate?

Demetrius's suggestion finally satisfied Pompey. That's right, he still can't live without that feeling of being sought after. That's what his life is all about.

There was a commotion on the deck, and Demetrius opened the door to the bridge room, and Pompey walked out in loose robes, only to see the white tents and cooking smoke on both sides of the bay of Ponticabion, and the trenches, fences, and turrets that separated the two Roman armies, and the tension between the soldiers on both sides—the pirates and the new model army that had turned into bandits were at ease, and both Pompey and Peternius gave them orders to recruit, and they put on the red cloak of the Roman legions, Continue to take the salary of competing with each other.

As for the bay, it was full of floating objects of all kinds, as well as the gray, swollen corpses of people and livestock, a masterpiece of raids and plundering by the Purple Sail pirates, and the whole situation was even worse than Pompey had imagined. Although the Eighth Legion had gone ashore, all the previous supplies had been plundered by the Thirteenth Legion, and the baggage of the Bronze Shield Army of Pontus had been captured, and the income from the entire island city market town had been looted, and now all of it was hoarded in the Acropolis, while Peternius was in charge of the city of Ponticabion, and did not take Pompey's message seriously at all. There was no way, there were too many veterans and officers who hated Pompey in the Thirteenth Legion, and Pompey thought that triumph was imminent, so he moved some selfishness, and in order to save money, he asked Demetrius to cut down and expel a group of ruffians or people who did not obey him, and as a result, these people have now all gone to the Thirteenth Legion.

What's worse is that those Zifan pirates who want to surrender themselves now seem to have forgotten their previous promises, and they have been attacking their own lines of communication all day long, but they have never embarrassed the transport ships of the Thirteenth Legion, so that Pompey can only supply the army on the island along Sinop, Colchis, and then by land to the Cimmerian Strait, and ten bushels of wheat can only be transported to the mouth of the Eighth Legion, and the complaints of the soldiers have already gone straight to the sky, and Tri Ali is constantly urgent, asking for wheat, wine, olive oil, and blankets, Military shoes, pack horses and mules, in short, everything!

That's right, this terrible situation must be worth talking about by the purple-robed guys in the Concord Temple!

"Gnaeus. Pompey is now a dangerous figure, what exactly is he going to do, what is he trying to achieve? I'm sorry everyone, but even the soothsayer of the Temple of Jupiter can't give us a reassuring answer, we only know that he has eight or ten legions, twelve kingdoms, and three hundred tribal peoples of Asia Minor in his hands, and he can decide the life and death of a king at will, and then he asks the city of Rome to give him a second great triumphal treatment, and he also uses the fanaticism of the people and the power of moderation in his hands to rob the legions of other provinces, he is too greedy! He and my brother are about the same as crocodiles, and once they open their mouths to eat, they don't stop in the water at all. In front of the half-moon podium of the Senate, Lucuras, the long-awaited "Tuna" Lucuras, suddenly appeared and began to deliver a speech against Pompey.

Lucuras was then applauded by Cato the Younger and his friends, and the senators who supported Pompey gathered around Cicero and proclaimed Pompey's great achievement in exterminating the pirates, "Is not such a general worthy of the love of the people?" ”

"The populace, especially the mob that lived on 'floating islands' (Rome's name for high-rise, low-end apartments), loved him a little too much. My friend Cicero, do not forget the lessons of the Gracchus brothers and Catiline, and stop putting the city of Rome before the whirlwind of riots, and to tell the truth I do not want the great Pompey to be a second Marius in his later years. Cato the Younger stood up and warned in a loud voice, "besides, Pompey has great economic problems, and he may have concealed the great gains he and his army have made in this war, but by some clumsy means, and when a concubine of Mithridates handed him over the Pontus treasury of six thousand Talents, he then declared that the vault was a fake, full of stones and iron, and what could be more incredible?" (To be continued......)