Rome must fall.

Chapter 367 Rampant Pirates

Cicero agreed to the Sicilians' request, not only because Sicily was where he started his career and the Sicilians regarded him as their patron saint, but more importantly, he needed to use this opportunity to make a name for himself and establish his authority in the Roman legal community, so that his name would be praised by the Roman people.

Coincidentally, the defense lawyer invited by Valles was the Roman Senator Hortensius, who was the most famous lawyer in Rome in the past decade. He was known for his elegant movements and gorgeous words. He also had a close relationship with Sulla and had served as the speaker at Sulla's funeral. He always maintained his status as an important member of the Senate.

It is easy to imagine how difficult it would be to win this lawsuit, but this instead aroused Cicero's fighting spirit.

Through his unremitting efforts, he collected a lot of evidence of Wallace's crimes.

On the first day of trial, he cleverly avoided arguing with Hortensius in his statements, avoiding dragging the case into a long and consuming process, and instead presented all the evidence at the beginning.

This sudden step disrupted Hortensius's plan and focused the attention of the judges and the public present on the criminal evidence.

Hortensius waived his right to defend himself, and the trial ended quickly.

Before the verdict was announced, Wallace and his family fled to Massilia in a hurry.

The news spread throughout Rome: Hortensius's rule over the legal profession was over, and Cicero wore the crown.

From then on, Cicero became a celebrity in Rome.

In the blink of an eye, it was a new year (69 BC, the fourth year of the establishment of Knicks). Caesar, who was elected as the quaestor, was sent by the Senate to Outer Spain to serve as the deputy of the provincial governor Antistius Virtus.

Just before he set out, he suffered two unexpected blows: his aunt Julia and his wife Cornelia died one after another, for which he held two grand funerals.

At Julia's funeral, Caesar gave a speech, talking about her illustrious ancestors (the Ulysses clan was descended from the goddess Venus) and the relationship between her mother's family and the ancient Roman kings, but did not mention his controversial uncle Marius. However, he included monuments symbolizing Marius' victory in the funeral procession and had an actor play Marius, and no one present protested.

It was tradition for elderly ladies of Roman noble families to receive lavish public funerals upon their death, but Caesar gave his wife Cornelia the same honor.

He was the first Roman to give such a young woman a public and lavish funeral.

This gesture was very popular among the people. Many people regarded it as an expression of grief from a kind-hearted man. After all, when Caesar was young, he refused Sulla's forgiveness for his wife and wandered for many years. Although he had many romantic affairs, the people firmly believed through this funeral that he deeply loved his wife.

The Romans attached great importance to funerals, and Caesar also carried out a successful self-promotion through the funerals of his aunt and wife.

Although Sulla won the civil war, he did not win much support from the people. The Roman citizens did not accept all of his decisions. Therefore, after his death, many of his decrees were overturned one after another.

In this era, the powerful were in power and the lives of the common people were becoming increasingly difficult, so the Roman people began to miss Rome when the common people were in power. In particular, in the minds of many people, Marius was still a great hero. He made the Romans who had suffered setbacks in Africa proud again, and saved Italy from the threat of northern barbarians.

However, the two leaders of the Plebeian Party had long passed away, and the Plebeian Party no longer existed under the continuous suppression of Sulla and his followers. But after experiencing these two funerals, many Roman people suddenly realized that Caesar, as the nephew of Marius and the son-in-law of Cinna, was not just an eccentric and romantic Roman youth, but might also be the best successor to the Plebeian Party.

While the Roman people were still discussing the funeral, Caesar set off for Outer Spain, where he was in charge of the province's finances and also participated in various local activities as a representative of Governor Virtus.

Vitus, who trusted Caesar very much, also sent him to some places to handle judicial affairs. He completed all tasks well and was highly praised by the local people.

In late autumn of that year, Caesar came to the Spanish city of Cadiz to handle court affairs.

In his free time, he visited the local Temple of Hercules and saw a statue of Alexander the Great. He suddenly burst into tears, because the Macedonian king had conquered half of the world at the same age, while he himself had not achieved anything yet.

To make him even more upset, he soon had a dream in which he raped his mother, Aurelia.

Anxious, he went to consult a prophet.

The prophet interpreted his dream: he was destined to rule the world because the mother he had raped represented Mother Earth, the mother of all things.

These two things eventually prompted him to decide to leave the province early and return to the Roman political arena to fight. The provincial governor Vitus, who had formed a friendship with him, approved his early departure and properly handled the financial affairs after his departure to avoid anyone blaming Caesar.

After Caesar returned to Rome, one important thing he did was to remarry. His bride was Pompeia, the granddaughter of Sulla and also the granddaughter of Quintus Pompey (who served as consul at the same time as Sulla in 88 BC).

After his experience in provincial politics, Caesar became more tactful. On the one hand, he publicized his relationship with Marius, and on the other hand, he used this marriage to ease the hostility of conservative senators in the Senate.

Pompeia was only a distant relative of the great Pompeius, and the two families were very distant, so Caesar's second marriage does not seem to have directly linked him to the greatest and most beloved general of Rome at the time.

During his tenure as consul, Pompey was teased by Crassus and embarrassed many times. After leaving office, he learned his lesson and deliberately kept a low profile and was humble at all times, so his performance in the Senate was mediocre.

This does not mean that Pompey began to be content with the status quo. On the contrary, trapped in the Roman political arena where power, interests, conspiracy and ambition were intertwined, he missed the praise of the people that his victory on the battlefield had brought him. He began to wait patiently for the opportunity to seek a new military command position.

At this time, all provinces and regions under Roman rule were at peace, with the exception of Asia Minor.

There, the Roman army led by Lucullus completely captured Pontus, and King Mithridates fled to neighboring Armenia, where he was protected by King Tigranes.

Lucullus sent envoys to ask the King of Armenia to hand over Mithridates, but was rejected by Tigranes.

So, without obtaining Roman authorization, Lucullus declared war on Armenia.

Soon, he destroyed the Armenian army and captured its important city, Tigranosetta.

The most powerful country in the Mesopotamian region was no match for Lucullus, which made his position as commander of the army more secure.

Pompey had no chance to command the army on land for the time being, but the opportunity to lead troops at sea always existed because of the rampant pirates in the Mediterranean.

The problem of Mediterranean piracy is old, but after Rome began to invade and rule the East, piracy became extremely rampant. The main reason for this was that Rome established hegemony over the entire Mediterranean and broke up all local authorities to prevent them from threatening its own interests, but refused to bear the burden of direct management. As a result, Rome cleared the battlefield for the pirates and provided them with fertile ground for growth.

For those areas that lost their authority and became chaotic, pirates at least brought order to the people living there, so some towns often paid protection fees to pirates, and some towns were willing to provide ports. In this way, the pirates' team grew stronger and stronger, and their traces could be seen everywhere in the Mediterranean.

Later, pirates began to threaten Roman citizens themselves. Caesar's kidnapping by pirates was by no means an isolated case. Over the past decade or so, being captured by pirates had become part of the occupational dangers of young Roman aristocrats.

However, the Roman nobles needed a large number of slaves, especially high-quality slaves, and pirates were the most stable providers of slaves. In several major ports in southern Italy, such as Tarantum, more than 10,000 slaves were bought and sold every day. The huge scale of the trade brought huge income, which enriched the pirate leaders and the big tycoons in Rome.

Some Roman nobles even kept pirates, which enabled them to make huge profits while attacking their opponents.

The support and indulgence of Roman nobles allowed the pirates to become increasingly powerful. They gained more and more control over the oceans and had the ability to cut off the Mediterranean shipping lanes from time to time.

Everything Rome needed, from slaves to food, began to be threatened by pirates.

The Senate was still hesitant, but the people's voices were getting louder and louder, so the Senate had to respond to the people's demands and sent Marcus Antony as commander-in-chief the year before Spartacus's uprising, responsible for maintaining maritime security and suppressing pirates.

Marcus Antony was the greatest lawyer in Rome before Cicero. He served as Roman consul and once led a fleet to destroy Cilicia, the most important stronghold of pirates.

But the Marcus Antonius sent by the Senate this time was the son of the great lawyer, and the proverb "A hero's father makes a hero's son" did not apply to him.

It was well known in the Senate that Antony II had little military ability. The reason they chose him proved that certain interest groups in Rome did not want the pirates to be wiped out.

After Antony II came to power, he successfully accomplished two things, just as some senators had wished: first, he started a lucrative pirate business in the area around Sicily; second, the fleet he sent was defeated by real pirates near Crete.

(End of this chapter)