The statement that he wanted to do good was meaningless unless he did.

- Plautus (the most important comedy writer of ancient Rome)

After concluding their discussion with Tiberius about the internal forces of the Epirus kingdom, Sulla and Pompey took their farewell to Tiberius; Of course, their farewell was not to leave the conference room, but to leave the Brutus family temporarily. Their reason, of course, was to go to other regions to gather consorts and horses for the Brutus family, and Tiberius couldn't ask for it!

After leaving the Brutus family, Sulla and Pompey did not delay, and got into their respective carriages and began to go straight to the port; However, the two of them invariably showed a strange smile in their respective carriages. It took at least five full days for a carriage to travel from Tarentum of the Brutus family to the port; And Sulla and Pompey's promise to Tiberius was half a month.

There was obviously a very heavy grit in this, otherwise how could Sulla and Pompey gather a hundred transports in ten days? It's an impossible task! Knowing that the current island of Sicily is controlled by the Kingdom of Carthage, the enemy of the Roman Republic, it is certainly impossible for Sulla and Pompey to go to Sicily for help.

Moreover, it is impossible for Sicily to have a transport ship of this magnitude; After the Roman Republic, the Kingdom of Carthage, and the Greek city-states, the scale of Sicily's maritime trade is less than one-tenth of its heyday, and the number of merchant ships of various types is less than one-twentieth of its peak.

In addition, in the last two years, the Roman Republic and the Kingdom of Carthage have been at war, and Hannibal of the Kingdom of Carthage controls the whole of Sicily; Sulla and Pompey wanted to get enough ships from Sicily was nothing short of whimsical! Besides, where could Sulla and Pompey get enough transports?

From Tarentum, even to the Greek peninsula, it takes more than ten days to make a round trip; As for the farther places, not to mention the round trip, even a trip may take more than ten days. And since Sulla and Pompey could boast of Haikou in front of the generals of Tiberius and Brutus, it must have made sense; Otherwise, they will never be able to be untargeted.

Then there is only one possibility, and that is that Sulla and Pompey have been holding Tiberius and Brutus by the nose from beginning to end; They had already arranged each step of the plan, and then they brought Tiberius and the Brutus family into their plan step by step, and let everyone do what they wanted!

But is that really the case? While the captains of the Brutus family were busy preparing for the expedition, and while Tiberius was busy planning the future of the Brutus family, Sulla and Pompey's carriage finally arrived at the port of Tarentum; After arriving at the port, the two of them got on a three-lined battleship that had already been prepared and set sail!

The two stood side by side on the deck of the battleship, until the port of Tarentum behind them became more and more blurred, and Sula said to Pompey with a smile: "Your Excellency Pompey, how is it?" I'm right. As long as we can work together and play this game well, the Brutus family will not be able to exceed our expectations; They will only move forward in our arrangement! ”

Pompey also pretended to sigh helplessly, and then said in a slightly pitiful tone: "I didn't expect that the Brutus family, which had stood in the Roman Republic for hundreds of years, would have such a dull day!" However, in the previous meeting, I was surprised by Tiberius's performance; I didn't expect Tiberius, who has always been despised by the world, to have such courage! ”

Sula was also quite shocked by this at the time, and after thinking about it carefully, he found that it was actually a reasonable thing; If the once-prosperous Brutus family was really reduced to the point of worthlessness, then why did they entrench themselves in the southern provinces of the Roman Republic, and make the provinces of these two republics their family provinces? Is it just luck?

Therefore, after Pompey expressed such an emotion, Sulla shook his head and said: "Your Excellency Pompey, there will never be only one or two geniuses in this world; Although many characters are not enough to describe as geniuses, their ability to rise above others speaks for themselves.

Doesn't the fact that the Brutus family was able to flourish in the hands of Tiberius instead of decaying? Everyone has their own shortcomings, and you and I are no exception, let alone Tiberius; With his qualifications, it is not easy for him to be able to do this step today, and it should not be underestimated! ”

"Also, after all, not everyone can compare with the geniuses of Oscar of the Augustus family and Caesar of the Julius family; Compared to them, even if it is you, I can only bow down! Fortunately, there is no conflict between us and the families of Augustus and Julius; Not before, not now, and not in the future! ”

"Not necessarily, you know, we want the East to be prosperous and fertile; Who is not salivating at the Orient at such a young careerist like them! If they can really lead their family to become stronger step by step, maybe one day we will become each other's enemies! ”

Hearing Sulla's words, Pompey seemed to know the man beside him for the first time; After turning his head and carefully studying Sulla for a while, Pompey turned his head to look at the sea in the distance and said, "Your Excellency Sula, you are a little too high-minded of Caesar and Oscar, can they be more genius than Alexander the Great in the past?"

Even a legend as majestic as Alexander the Great only expanded eastward after occupying the Greek peninsula; The southernmost part of Alexander's empire was only as far as the current Kingdom of Egypt. Will they still be able to defeat all the enemies in their sphere of influence and expand all the way to the east? It's impossible! ”

Sulla didn't seem to hear Pompey's words, but just looked quietly into the distance; The day's journey at sea was spent like this, and the two did not communicate too much, but each thought about their own things. The tedious voyage lasted only two days, and on the third day Sulla and Pompey made the sailors suddenly turn and head in the other direction.

In less than three hours after the turn of the voyage, two large fleets slowly appeared in the sight of Sulla and Pompey; Seeing these two fleets, Sulla and Pompey looked at each other and smiled again, their own fleet had arrived! Yes, its own fleet; Do you think that the Roman Republic was the only one with the Richards family with their own fleet?

With the wealth of Sulla and Pompey, their status in the Roman Republic was much higher than that of Charles and Calleis, and they naturally had their own private fleets; It's just that before that, they had never exposed their private fleet. But when the time came, they felt that it was time to take out their fleet and use it officially!

Of course, the fleets of Sulla and Pompey, although not small, could not have a hundred transports combined; And the problem of war horses is not always with the fleet. In fact, as early as two months earlier, Sulla and Pompey had begun to prepare for this work; Not only did they borrow fifty transport ships from the East through various connections, but they also bought two thousand war horses!

The reason why fifteen hundred war horses were proposed at the meeting of the Brutus family was also to prevent the death of these two thousand war horses during transportation; As for the rest, it was entirely within Sulla and Pompey's expectations. In other words, in the past two months, everything in the Brutus family has been developing according to Sulla and Pompey's plan, and not a single step has been wrong!

As the three warships of Sulla and Pompey approached, the two fleets on the front side also raised flags to ask for the identity of the comer; After confirming the identities of Sulla and Pompey through a series of ciphers, the two fleets began to slowly merge into one fleet. A hundred transports were placed in the center of the fleet, and the rest of the warships were escorted on the two flanks in the formation of the two fleets.

Of these, eight triremes and twelve twines on the left flank and twenty transports in the central transport group were none other than the private fleet of the Sulla family; The twelve triremes and fourteen twines on the right flank, as well as thirty transports in the central transport group, were none other than the private fleet of the Pompey family, and the remaining fifty transports were borrowed from the East.

When Sulla and Pompey's ships joined the central transport, they quickly rowed out a small boat from each of the convoys on the left and right flanks, and made their way towards their ship. The two of them naturally knew that it was the fleet commander of their respective families who had come to see them, so they ordered the triem they were on to slow down so that they could better board the ship.

The first to arrive at the two-seater ship was the commander of the Sulla family's private fleet, who had a young and handsome face, and when he boarded the ship, he also spoke very well, much to the satisfaction of both Sulla and Pompey; The commander of the Pompey family's private fleet was on board, and this time it was not alone, but two brothers who looked very similar, and they looked much rougher and not younger.

If there are several naval commanders of the Augustan family, who were once part of the Ten Pirates, or Morgan, Blackbeard, and others who are still pirates at sea; They can find out that the commander of the Sulla family's private fleet is none other than Bellamy, the pirate prince of the top ten pirates, and the two commanders of the Pompey family's private fleet are the redbeard brothers of the top ten pirates! (To be continued.) )