Chapter 393 Caesar cheats on Crassus

Another sentence is praising Pompey as a "hero of the times".

What kind of achievements can be considered a hero of the times? Is it enough to wipe out pirates? ... Facing the cheering Roman people, Pompey felt that it was not enough. When he was a child, he admired the great Alexander. Now he felt that it was time to go to the East to win the great honor that the Romans had never thought of.

So, under his secret instructions, some senators who supported him proposed at the Senate meeting: they hoped that Pompey would replace Lucullus and be responsible for commanding the war in the East.

At the same time, some of his supporters also made similar suggestions at the citizens' meeting.

Although Lucullus continued to win in the East, this war that had lasted for seven or eight years seemed to have no end. It continued to consume Rome's wealth and the patience of the people.

And because of the propaganda of those who cared, the people also learned that because Lucullus was too harsh on the soldiers, these Roman soldiers who had been fighting and marching in the distant East and could not go home for many years, but could only receive pitiful military pay, finally couldn't bear it anymore. In the past winter, the entire army went on strike!

At this time, Mithridates, who had been on the run, returned to Pontus and resumed his throne.

So the arrogant Lucullus lowered his head and tearfully begged the soldiers to pick up their weapons again and continue to fight for Rome.

For most of this year, Lucullus was extremely embarrassed to deal with Mithridates and the dissatisfied soldiers. He had become a joke in Rome.

Among those who laughed at him were not only civilians, but also merchants and nobles.

Because he severely dealt with those usurers and tax farmers when fighting in the eastern provinces, cutting off their way to accumulate huge wealth by exploiting the people of the provinces, and these merchants had close ties with some senators in the Roman Senate.

Lucullus offended all classes in Rome, and Pompey, who successfully eliminated the pirates, was in his prime. Faced with this proposal, it was obvious what choice the Senate would make. Even Catullus, the chief of the Senate who had always been wary of Pompey, voted in favor.

Pompey not only successfully became the new military commander of the Eastern Province, but also obtained another right - he could randomly decide to continue the war with the enemy or restore peace.

In the spring of 66 BC (the seventh year of the establishment of the Nix tribe), because of the stalemate with the soldiers and the inability to command them to fight, Lucullus had to lead them to retreat from Armenia and return to the mountains west of Pontus for repair.

Pompey led the new army to his camp.

Lucullus, who had learned the news from other channels, went out to greet him with his attendants as usual, but he confronted Pompey outside the camp gate with a cold face. His attendants took the initiative to rush forward and handed over a laurel wreath made of new bay branches, while Pompey's attendants returned the sticks wrapped with laurel branches in their hands, completing the handover of commanders through such a ceremony.

However, the young Pompey was used to the cheers of the people, and suddenly suffered such indifference. Even though the other party was a senior in the same faction, he could not suppress his anger and immediately mocked Lucullus for being incompetent and wasting so many years without being able to kill Mithridates.

Lucullus retorted that his successor was like a carrion bird, driven crazy by blood, and the blood was left by enemies killed by people stronger than Pompey.

The scene became more and more heated and soon turned into a verbal abuse match. The servants of both sides had to pull the two generals apart.

But Pompey was the commander, and soon he ruthlessly deprived Lucullus of the command of his legion and led all the troops to the capital of Pontus.

Lucullus, who had no official position, was abandoned in the camp. In the end, he had to embark on a long journey back to Rome with the huge wealth he had looted from these eastern kingdoms.

In the past two years, in addition to the glorious Pompey, the newly promoted Roman senator Caesar also attracted attention. His gorgeous dress and constantly updated gossip became the topic of conversation among the people.

In the political arena, he also behaved boldly, which was in sharp contrast to most of the senators who were known for their conservatism at the time. The senators headed by Catullus were quite dissatisfied with this ostentatious young man.

But Caesar repeatedly cheered for Pompey and won Pompey's friendship. Pompey helped him and made Caesar the manager of the Via Appia in 66 BC.

The Via Appia was the first road built by the Romans to run through southern Italy. It is also one of the most important roads leading to Rome to date. There are so many businessmen and pedestrians coming and going every day that it needs to be maintained at all times.

However, the Roman treasury has always given only a small amount of funds. It is far from enough to maintain such a long road. In the past, managers either raised funds from merchant groups or just repaired the important defects of the road to make the road passable normally and barely maintain it until the end of their term.

But Caesar was different from previous administrators. After taking office, he publicly announced that the funds needed to renovate and improve the entire Appian Way and its ancillary buildings would not need to be raised by the people, but would be spent on his own private property.

Using personal money to run an office was not Caesar's idea. Many Roman senators also did this when they held positions, mainly to win people's hearts and get voters' support. However, most of them did so after serving as municipal officials, judicial officials and consuls. Caesar used such a large amount of money just to become the manager of the Appian Way, which really attracted great attention from the Roman people.

Caesar was not just talking. He quickly organized a construction team and began to rebuild the Appian Way.

It would cost a lot of money to improve the Appian Way and its ancillary buildings.

Caesar's father died early, and Caesar himself fled overseas for many years when he was young. Although he has become a senator now, his family has not accumulated much money.

However, Caesar did not worry about lack of money at all. The way he took was to borrow money from the rich, and the main target was Crassus.

During his tenure as the Governor of Spain, Crassus' father earned a lot of wealth for the family. Later, Crassus's brother died in battle and the family property went to Crassus, but Crassus did not sit back and enjoy the fruits of his labor. He inherited his father's business talent and used his status as a senator to get involved in a variety of businesses and maintain close ties with tax farmers and other usurious financial groups in other provinces.

He is best known for almost monopolizing the real estate business in the entire city of Rome through various means, which made him the richest man in Rome, but also made him jealous of some people.

However, although Crassus was rich and lived in an era of luxury and indulgence, his lifestyle was very simple. He did not make money for the sake of making money, but to satisfy his political ambitions. He has always been very generous in lending money to many politicians and rarely charged interest. However, when the agreed repayment date arrived, he would send people to collect the debt.

Most of the senators in the Senate either owed Crassus money or had benefited from his interest-free loans. These people were rarely members of the Roman noble families, because the latter were usually rich enough and did not need to borrow money. Some of them, like Caesar, came from the edge of the upper circle, but they were ambitious; others were senators of lower status, who had never served as chief executives and rarely had the opportunity to speak in the Senate, but they had the right to vote.

Crassus generously allowed these people to use their wealth so that they could get their rewards in politics.

Caesar was one of the many senators who borrowed money from Crassus. He didn't look special, but in Crassus's eyes he was indeed the most special one.

Caesar and Crassus were more than ten years apart. During the Roman Civil War between Marius and Sulla, the young Crassus experienced a period of wandering because he was a member of the Sulla faction, and Caesar was still a teenager at that time. When Sulla won the final victory, Caesar was forced to go into exile for many years because he refused to divorce Cinna's daughter, and the two had almost no intersection.

Later, Caesar finally returned to Rome and replaced his dead uncle as a priest. At this time, Crassus was already an important figure among the Roman elders. In the subsequent Spartacus uprising, he also served as a commander, led a large army, and finally wiped out the slave uprising.

During the entire war, Caesar, as a young man of the right age and a winner of the Warrior's Crown, naturally joined the army, but he was one of the captains of the two newly formed reserve legions, responsible for garrisoning the city of Rome, and had no intersection with Crassus.

But in the following years, Caesar's name attracted more and more attention from Crassus, of course, not just because Caesar had cheated on him.

Tertula was Crassus's wife and once the wife of Crassus's brother. His brother died in the civil war. Perhaps in order to inherit the family property more smoothly, or perhaps because of Tertula's family background, Crassus married this widowed sister-in-law and had several children.

After Caesar returned to Rome, although he married a new wife, he never stopped looking for beauty and seducing the ladies of Rome.

There are several reasons for him to do this: first, he was indeed too active in that aspect, beyond the ordinary; second, to kill the rumors that he succumbed to Nicomedes IV and became a pedophile. In fact, he did succeed. In recent years, the Roman people no longer talked about his affair in the East, and alleys were full of rumors about him; third, he had a strong desire to win. Caesar felt that sleeping with the wives of other senators proved that he was better than them not only in the Senate, but also in the bedroom.

In most cases, there were very few single noble women in Rome for Caesar to pursue, because when the girls were very young, their fathers would marry them off in order to establish and strengthen political ties, and divorced or widowed young or middle-aged women would often be arranged to remarry quickly.