Chapter 307: Service Act

"You're right." Maximus readily accepted it and responded quickly: "The third village on the Kupa River should be called Todlido."

Everyone looked at each other, with a hint of helplessness on their faces. They had been here for more than a year, and they knew more or less Illyrian. They understood the meaning of Maximus' name. "Todlido" comes from Illyrian meaning "third".

Snotia (first), Westeny (second), Todlido (third), it’s too simple for the chief to pick up the names! ... Everyone has similar emotions in their hearts.

"The fourth stockade on the Kupa River should be called Kupa Castle." Maximus continued.

Everyone blinked at each other again: it was indeed an extremely simple name.

"As for this kind of village -" Maximus stopped and thought about it carefully.

Everyone suddenly became nervous: This is the center of the next tribe, so we need to give it a nice name!

Maximus saw what they were thinking and smiled and said: "We just came here last year. Snodia, Westeny, and Todlido represent the footprints of us who just settled here. Whenever When our people call out the names of these three towns, they will remember the difficulty of settling in the first place, and this town - "

Maximus emphasized his tone and said word by word: "It should be called Afedilia, yes, it means 'starting point'. We settled down, we experienced wars, and we stood firm here. Heel, now we will use this as our starting point to dominate the entire Great River Plain!"

"Aphidilia, what a nice name!" Pygris and Cornelius shouted almost in unison.

Several other people were also encouraged by Maximus's words, and their faces showed more or less excitement, but at the same time they also had a trace of "It turns out that I was just trying to be simple. The leader gave the town such a name because it contained a certain meaning." It has a deeper meaning".

Karina coughed lightly and said: "Chief, now that the names of these new towns in the tribe have been chosen, should we also determine the chief administrators of these towns?"

"Okay, when we discuss the candidates for village chiefs later, we will also determine the chief executives of these towns, including Snodiya, and I will no longer serve as the chief executive of Afedilia. Here There are many people and many things to do, and we need dedicated people to manage them.”

Maximus paused, tapped the back of the chair with his hand, looked around everyone, and said slowly: "There is another issue that needs to be discussed by all of us. Capito also mentioned this issue just now, that is, the tribe is now We don’t have enough capacity to manage and support a large number of foreign auxiliary people, but many of our large-scale public projects, such as building roads and river embankments, require enough labor, so what should we do?…

My idea is to formulate a new law that stipulates that except for tribal officials and tribesmen with titles, the rest of the tribe must perform labor service once a year? "

"What is labor?" Everyone was confused about this new term.

Maximus explained: "That is to say, the tribe can recruit the tribesmen according to this decree and let them work together to build the tribe's public facilities. This kind of recruitment is mandatory. If the tribesmen refuse, it will be a violation of the decree and they will be required to do so." The people who were punished and served were not paid, and they even had to provide their own food.”

After Maximus finished speaking, everyone began to look solemn.

Quintus, Sidonius, Horace, and Capito from Rome, Volenus and Gauchos from other towns in Italy, Cephisophon from the Greek city-states... they had not heard There was a practice of "labor labor" in the past, because most of the public facilities in the city-state were done by slaves, or the army did it by the way.

Karina, who is from Gaul, has also never heard of the practice of "labor" because the Gallic tribe has no concept of building public facilities at all.

It was Carina who raised the objection first: "Chief, force the people to serve... This labor service is not good. It feels like we are those hateful Roman nobles who treat the people as slaves and force them to work."

"These are completely different things." Maximus explained patiently: "We make the people perform labor service not for our own personal gain, but for the sake of the entire tribe and all the people!

The roads have been built to facilitate the people to travel and transport goods; the river embankments have been built to protect the people's fields and prevent river flooding; the bridges have been built so that the people can easily travel between the two sides...

Everyone knows the benefits of building public buildings, and some enthusiastic people will even take the initiative to participate. However, we cannot always let good people do the work while others watch and enjoy the benefits in the end...

Therefore, it is fair to make labor service a law and make it an obligation of the people. Everyone should do everyone's work, and everyone can enjoy it after everyone does it. This is fair, right? "

Karilana nodded involuntarily, but then she looked confused: "Chief, since you said this is a fair decree, but you just said that tribal officials and people with titles do not have to perform labor service... Officials I can understand why they don’t have to do hard labor, because they need to work at their posts all the time, but why don’t the people with titles not have to do it?”

Maximus smiled: "This is because they have made enough contributions to the tribe, so they enjoy certain privileges. As I said before, the tribesmen with titles who are not tribal officials can solve disputes in the village with the village chief and supervise the village chief's work...

In fact, they are the nobles of the Nix tribe, not only because they have a little more money and food, but also because their status is different from that of ordinary tribesmen.

As the tribe becomes stronger and more populous, the tribal laws will continue to improve, and more privileges will be given to tribesmen above the knighthood. This will also make the vast majority of ordinary tribesmen work harder to contribute to the tribe so that they can become a member of the nobility. This is the real charm of the twenty-title system!"

Everyone subconsciously looked at each other, and then looked away to avoid letting the other party see the fire burning in their eyes.

After a short silence in the hall, Volenus asked with concern: "Chief, if the tribesmen are required to perform labor and build public facilities every year, will it affect their farming?"

"No, because farming and growing crops are the foundation of our tribe. We cannot disturb them during the busy farming season. We will only recruit tribesmen to help with the work during the slack season."

Volenus was relieved.

Quintus then asked another question: "Chief, doesn't our tribe have a decree stipulating that the tribe members should be organized for military training during the slack season? Now we have to conscript the tribe members for labor service. Will the military training of the tribe be abandoned in the future?"

"Of course not." Maximus continued to explain patiently: "The tribe's territory is now several times larger, and the population has increased several times. During the slack season, the Ministry of Works cannot conscript the entire tribe members to build public facilities. At most, there are only two or three thousand people, the population of seven or eight villages. The rest of the tribe members can continue military training.

And my suggestion is that the Ministry of Works should try to conscript the tribe members from the villages and towns closest to the facilities to be built, so that it is convenient for the tribe members who are serving labor to work, rest, and cook, and the tribe can also save a lot of trouble. Of course, the Ministry of Works must make plans in advance and coordinate with the Ministry of War, so as not to conflict with military training."

Capito nodded to show that he understood.

"Do you have any different opinions?" Maximus asked, his eyes fell on Karina.

"As long as we can ensure that the labor done by the tribesmen is for the public facilities of the tribe, I have no objection." Karina said.

"Of course, we can formulate more detailed restrictions when discussing the details of this decree. After the decree is formulated, all tribesmen must know that no department officials or town administrators are allowed to abuse this decree for personal gain, thereby damaging the trust of the tribesmen in the tribe!" Maximus' tone became stern.

Karina nodded immediately: "I agree to formulate this decree."

"I agree too." Capito had been looking forward to it for a long time.

Others also expressed their agreement one after another. After all, this decree would not affect the work of their respective departments, but would be of great benefit to the tribe.

Just as everyone began to further discuss the content of this decree, the attendant walked in quickly and whispered a few words to Maximus.

After hearing this, Maximus was overjoyed. He stood up suddenly and said loudly: "Everyone, I have good news for you! Follis Lysia is pregnant!"

Everyone present immediately smiled and said: "Congratulations, Chief! Congratulations, Chief! This is a great event for our tribe!"

This is of course a great event! First of all, it proves that Maximus is in good health. Secondly, it greatly eliminates everyone's concerns about the successor of the tribal leader during this period. The future of the Nix tribe has been continued, which makes people more excited!

……………………………………………………………………………………

Early in the morning, after breakfast, Selysis came to the main house of the village.

"You came so early today, Selysis." Starks, who was still chewing bread in the house, greeted him vaguely.

"I got up early today and cooked early, so I came early." Celis answered seemingly casually, but in fact it was because he had been enduring for more than ten years and had been living a dull life. However, in the past two days after taking on the position of temporary steward, he had done a lot of things and felt particularly fulfilled, so he wanted to come and work whenever he had time.