Augustus Road

"Alas, alas, all who have ships in the sea have become rich with their treasures, but she has been reduced to ruins in an instant." - The Book of Revelation about the fall of Babylon

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These days, the port of Cagliari in Sardinia is so busy that it flies. Large and small ships hoist their sails and row their oars, shuttling back and forth on the sea. Overloaded ships are constantly tilting and stranded on the pier, but merchants are still jumping their feet, asking workers to load more grain there in exchange for balance.

The owner of the fleet laughed and began to squeeze more intermediary profits. They marked grades on the cabins, and charged different prices for different areas, whether they were carrying people or grain.

The manor owners also laughed. They dumped wheat at a price twice or even three times higher than in previous years, and they did not have to be responsible for transportation and sales. Anyway, the merchants directly placed their money and goods in the manor and took away the wheat directly. Is there anything more relaxed and comfortable than this? Many manor owners whose wealth suddenly expanded considered buying villas and apartments in Cagliari. They needed to paint landscapes in their future houses, build fireplaces, use seasonal flowers to decorate, and place abundant poppy seeds and honey wine in front of the altars of ancestors and gods. In this way, they can supervise the slaves' work in the manor in the countryside during the busy farming season, and take their families and senior slaves to live in the city during the slack farming season, where there are a variety of entertainment and social activities.

But a few days later, those merchants who were most eager to laugh could no longer laugh. Their original plan was to unload the wheat at the port dock near Rome and put it into the warehouse, waiting for the Senate to send a commissioner to buy it at a high price. Anyway, the treasury was now very full due to the income from the Mithridatic War, and directly handing it over to the purchasing commissioner in the surrounding areas could also save a lot of travel expenses.

However, when they docked at Ostia (Ostia Street leads to this port), Adia, Avenium and even Salini on the side of the Tyrrhenian Sea, they found that another large fleet had already come from the north to the south, concentrated in these areas and sold grain at a much lower price than theirs. Many local small caravans rushed to Rome to resell the grain as soon as they received it, and the Senate commissioner didn't even see a shadow - their travel expenses were also very precious.

"It's wheat from Etruria!"

Before Catiline died, Carapis and a group of knights and merchants started to establish an "economic community" here, and of course, Crassus, a big money sponsor, supported them. They mined local iron ore, or directly bought a large number of high-quality iron farm tools and utensils from the Gaul Celts with wine, and implemented the sharing of fertilizers, roads, and transport ships and vehicles. When Sardinia was still a group of panic buying, they quickly rushed south with the collectively harvested wheat, without going to Rome first, and directly "intercepted" the Sardinian caravans in these areas.

Sure enough, the caravan from Sardinia panicked. Some people decided to burn their boats and turn their big ships into small ones. They hired a lot of manpower and tried their best to transport grain to Rome along the Tiber River. However, the river was notorious for its insufficient transportation capacity and insufficient docking ports. The only area that could carry large-scale transportation was the "Carabis River Warehouse" rebuilt from the ruins of the original Valin Apartment. However, it was also magically deserted. No one was loading and unloading goods there, let alone the operation of the warehouse and crane. Only the words "Welcome to Paluma" on the lighthouse were still shining.

At the same time, the high-quality Etruscan wheat pouring in from various city gates quickly occupied the market in the whole city of Rome when the Sardinian caravans were in tears. The commissioners appeared at this time, but they were obviously not interested in the Sardinian wheat whose price had soared after shipping and futures rush buying. They were too lazy to touch the pottery jars with the mark of that place.

In less than one market day, the price of Sardinian wheat plummeted. Many caravans could only buy full ships of grain at extremely low prices in Ostia and Adia. Some people who didn't believe in evil drove their ships to sell little by little in the ports along the coast. It didn't take long for merchants who couldn't pay the ship's fare to be thrown into the sea by angry sailors. Of course, the main force that concentrated on buying Sardinian wheat was still the Etruscan merchants. They didn't need that much money now - the grain reserves in Rome were already saturated, and the price was very fair. The fathers of the Senate were very satisfied and prepared to sign a long-term grain contract with the Vera Farm in the area.

As for the batch of Sardinian wheat that was forced to be sold at a bargain price, it was transported to the granary of the port of Brindisi by Carabis's accomplices. They spent several times the price of this batch of cheap wheat to build a large-scale construction in the port, but it was not the Colosseum and the theater, but a series of well-equipped warehouses.

Because Pompey was about to land here with ten legions of veterans. In the non-military area of ​​Rome, no army was allowed to cross the Rubicon River in the north, and in the south was the port of Brindisi. But those 60,000 to 100,000 soldiers were not like mercury that would disappear without a trace once they landed. They had to stay in this seaport and wait for land resettlement and pensions, and most of their food, drink, and defecation would be borne by the state.

At that time, there was another wave of dumping, and it was cheap dumping. Carabis had calculated that in the ancient Roman Mediterranean world, the cost of a normal-capacity vehicle full of wheat would increase by 100 stadia for every additional 100 stadia. And people like me, who have information and stockpiled it in advance, can make a lot of money even if the price is half of the other party.

Humph, how can those expensive grains from other places be compared with me, who used Etruscan wheat to squeeze out Sardinian wheat, and then used Sardinian wheat to squeeze out other places!

When autumn came, everything in the Orphelenu Manor returned in the past few days, including stairs, bronze utensils, furniture, carpets, murals, wine vessels, slaves and farmers. Karabis sat comfortably on the stone chair in the flower corridor, drinking mint water to cool off. This manor is nice, with gentle breezes and beautiful weather. It rains when it should. He also wants to buy a similar place in a certain area next to a lake or sea, but now is not the time to talk about retreating. He and Habaluka were supervising together. The craftsmen were subdividing the fields, sowing thyme, poppy, clover and bee flowers in the intervals, and building beehives and beehives around the courtyard and manor. Habaluka began to arrange the ceramic jars for breeding snails. They were filled with wheat flour and grape juice and placed in the stream and under the shade of trees. Snails like such a damp environment. Not only fish species were planted in the pool, but also fat geese were raised. When they matured, they kept filling their mouths with food and wine, and then sold their most delicious livers at a high price.

The young widow Yulia was in a good and bad mood. She felt that the man had both returned the manor and taken it away. When she was wiping the furniture and utensils, she suddenly saw a toga left by his father in the suitcase. It was made of thick wool and was black and blue. It was a must-have ceremonial clothing for Roman men, just as important as today's suits.

She spread the folded toga on the carpet and stroked the fine wrinkles on it. She remembered that her father was deprived of his noble status by his grandfather, so he left the toga in Orpheus and took his family away to the island of Rhodes, where he died in the war.

Under the window under the half-arched roof of the building, Yulia held up her robe and looked at Carabis, who was bossing around like a master under the flower gallery. She was a little confused. You know, the return on Habaluka's investment in the fleet was more than a dozen talents, but Carabis was still not satisfied. He destroyed most of the caravans on the island and was still planning the future blueprint of the Ophelenu Manor. Habaluka listened to him, and the new craftsmen, farmers, slaves and even the cooks in the manor began to listen to him. This feeling of usurping the throne was really annoying!

In the golden September sunshine, Yulia gently gestured with her hands to Carabis's figure and his father's toga robe. Then her eyes stared at the box on the clothes box, where King Numa's ring happened to be. (To be continued.)