Rome must fall.

Chapter 398 Caesar is cuckolded

In May, the Boyi sent envoys to try to negotiate with Nix and demand that he release all Boyi captives.

Maximus was willing to negotiate and release the King of the Boyi, but refused to release the other Boyi captives because the Nyx tribe had acquired large tracts of land and was in urgent need of labor.

When the Boii envoy saw that Maximus refused to agree, even to his own king, he stopped the negotiations, made some harsh remarks, and returned to the north bank.

As the Nix fleet cruised on the Drao River day and night, Maximus was not worried about the safety of the southern shore territory. He led officials from various factions to start governing the new territory...

..............................................................................

Faced with the massive rebellion launched by Catiline in the Etruria region north of Rome, most senators were panicked, especially when they learned that many Sulla's veterans had joined the rebels. They became more and more worried about the recurrence of the Roman Civil War. So at the Senate meeting, some people proposed to recall Pompey who was fighting in the East to suppress Catiline's rebellion.

Cato was outraged by this and declared that he would rather die than see Pompey appointed commander of the Italians.

Cicero also strongly opposed this proposal. When he was young, he regarded Pompey as a hero of Rome. Now that he was in a high position in the political arena, he was unwilling to see Pompey continue to achieve one glory after another on the battlefield and gain unparalleled prestige among the people, thus threatening the security of the Roman republican system.

In the end, he persuaded the Senate not to recall Pompey, but to actively prepare for war.

Facts have proved that although Catiline made a lot of trouble in the northwest of Rome, the army he temporarily formed was complex in composition and lacked training. Facing the well-organized and large Roman army, it was defeated again and again. Finally, it was completely defeated in the Battle of Bistoli, and he himself died on the battlefield. He posed almost no substantial danger to Rome and was far from comparable to the Spartacus rebels.

But even so, many Roman senators still felt panic and staged a farce of tactical retreat from Rome during the war.

For example, Hebridas, who had just stepped down as consul, should have been one of the commanders in the rebellion, but he pretended to be sick and did not go to the battlefield. Later, he hurried to Macedonia to take office, concentrated on making money, and kept a low profile in everything else.

Most senators kept a low profile, except for Caesar, who was always the most high-profile one in the Senate.

In 62 BC, he officially took office as a praetor, and as soon as he took office, he began to attack Catullus in retaliation for almost framing him in the Catiline incident.

The Temple of Jupiter in Rome had been destroyed by fire ten years earlier. Catullus was ordered to repair the temple while serving as consul, but it had not yet been completed. So the law officer Caesar summoned Catullus to a citizens' assembly in the Roman Forum, accusing him of embezzling the project funds allocated by the Senate and demanding an explanation.

He forced Catullus not to go up to the podium, but to give his speech and explanations on a lower level, in order to humiliate the chief senator.

He even proposed to give the task of restoring the temple to someone else, but ultimately failed because many of Catullus' supporters rushed to the meeting.

However, winning was not Caesar's main goal. He cared more about showing up in public and demonstrating his concern for Roman public affairs.

Caesar was also one of the senators who actively demanded the recall of Pompey to quell the rebellion, but still failed. However, his high-profile support for this great hero won the hearts of the people and the favor of Pompey.

Not only did Caesar praise and support Pompey in public to increase his own reputation, but he also shared Pompey's wife Muzia with him while Pompey was on an overseas expedition.

But he did not expect that revenge would come so quickly. At the end of that year, he was involved in a rape scandal, and this time he was the innocent party.

Caesar's high priest's residence was chosen as the venue for the festival of the Goddess of Good Fortune that year. Since the ceremony was performed entirely by women, according to custom, all men were not allowed to be present.

However, the next quaestor, the handsome Claudius, disguised himself as a woman, sneaked into the meeting place, and had a tryst with Caesar's wife Pompeia. He was discovered, causing an uproar.

As a legal officer, Caesar could have charged Claudius with "blasphemy", but he did not want to make a big deal out of it, nor did he want to offend Claudius, who had a wide network of contacts, so he gave up testifying in court, allowing Claudius to get away with it.

In turn, he divorced Pompeia on the grounds that "Caesar's wife should not be suspected."

In fact, Caesar and Pompeia were never as close as he was with Cornelia (Caesar's first wife). After their marriage, Caesar spent too much time with Servilia and other mistresses, Pompeia was unable to conceive a child, and the family was dominated by her mother-in-law Aurelia. It is completely understandable that Pompeia was resentful and cheated.

Of course, we cannot ignore the temptation of Claudius. He is smart, handsome, and very seductive. Like Caesar, he likes to seduce other people's wives and is a playboy.

In short, this incident became a hot topic among the Roman people. Caesar, who was in the midst of the storm, had to resign from his position as a judge and rush to Spain.

According to Roman law, a juristian could take up the post of governor of a province after leaving office, and the province designated by the Senate for Caesar was Spain.

Caesar worked in Spain for a year as quaestor, and his first appointment as provincial governor was in the Spain he was familiar with. Is it such a coincidence?

Of course not, Caesar was now influential in the Senate and he had the ability to choose where he wanted to go.

However, he almost failed to make the trip because some creditors prevented him from leaving and demanded that he pay back the money first.

Caesar turned to Crassus for help.

Although Crassus was also a creditor, he had a close relationship with Caesar and did not hesitate to take out 830 talents as a deposit, allowing Caesar to go to Spain to take office smoothly.

In 61 BC (the twelfth year of the establishment of the Nix tribe), Caesar began to perform his duties as provincial governor.

For the senators, the Spanish province was not a good place to go. There were too many barbarians there, and looting and robbery were their way of life. Moreover, the region was scarred by the war to suppress Sertorius in previous years, which led to rampant bandits.

Some senators were happy to see Caesar take office as Governor of Spain, and they hoped with glee that he would suffer a big setback there, because they felt that Caesar was very good at stirring up trouble in Rome, but he was good at fooling around with women and might show his true colors when facing the vicious barbarians.

But as soon as Caesar arrived in Spain, he immediately recruited ten new battalions, increasing the existing garrison strength by half, and then began to conquer the Celtic tribes that refused to submit to Rome. He won battles again and again, and his military talents were initially displayed. He was also hailed as a "triumphant general" by the people of the province.

However, his success in Spain did not cause much waves in Rome, because all the Romans' attention was attracted by another major event - Pompey's return.

Lucullus was right, he had already crushed the power of the Kingdom of Pontus, and Pompey was just a scavenger bird who came to take advantage of the situation.

Indeed, when Pompey succeeded Lucullus to command, crushed Mithridates' power once and for all with a larger army, and easily subdued Tigranes, he could not be satisfied with just this achievement.

In the next few years, he seized every opportunity to command his army to expedition to places that no Roman army had ever set foot in before: he conquered the Caucasus in the north, went south to Syria, besieged Jerusalem... Except for the powerful Parthian Kingdom and the desert area, the entire Eastern Mediterranean forces were brought under Roman control.

He also spent a lot of time establishing provincial administration in these newly occupied territories and enacting a number of laws to ensure peace in this vast eastern region.

So when he returned to Rome in the summer of 61 BC, the whole city of Rome was shocked.

At his third triumphal procession, Pompey, who was several years older, no longer had the absurd idea of ​​riding an elephant chariot, but his vain character remained unchanged. Therefore, he specially asked people to hold up a large sign in the parade, which clearly read: He defeated and captured tens of millions of enemies, seized and sank nearly a thousand warships, and accepted the surrender of thousands of towns or strongholds...

His procession included hundreds of captured princes and nobles from the East, countless gold and silver jewels, and hundreds of floats marked with the names of every kingdom or race he had defeated... and he himself rode in a chariot decorated with jewels and wore a cloak said to have been worn by Alexander the Great.

Yes, Pompey's brilliant achievements eclipsed the achievements of Rome's previous great generals and were comparable to Alexander the Great, who conquered the East at a young age.

The first thing Pompey did after returning to Rome was to divorce his dissolute wife Muzia. Then he found Cato and expressed his hope to marry his niece, the daughter of Caesar's mistress Servilia. He also proposed to Servilia's other daughter on behalf of his son.

This was Pompey's way of expressing goodwill to the conservatives in the Senate and trying to ease relations with them, because he knew that these people had been quite resentful of him during the years of war.

Why did he propose to Cato? Because the elderly Catullus had passed away, and the young, aggressive, uncompromising Cato, who came from a noble family, became the banner of the conservatives.

Cato firmly rejected Pompey's proposal, which increased his reputation and made the conservative senators see that Cato valued morality more than political benefits, which made them rely on him more.

Pompey's marriage proposal failed, and he suffered a series of setbacks in the political arena.

(End of this chapter)