Crusader Kings: Prisoners of War

But in any case, Vespa sighed deeply in the end: "I see, I will deal with it recently. You may have to suffer a little, because things are not easy to handle. Maybe the wedding ceremony will be omitted because of some technical problems?"

If Orville was here, he would give him a look of understanding, but Tia's eyes were blank now, and she obviously didn't know what this meant.

Vespa was helpless and patiently explained the problem to the other party: "You are the one who will inherit the throne in the future. If you follow the normal marriage process, where is your dignity? And if we completely follow another process, it is really too embarrassing for Orville. Is it okay to say that?"

First of all, it needs to be admitted that after the middle of the Republic, the Roman marriage system has improved. The husband no longer has the right to own his wife. However, due to the limitations of the times, both marriage and marriage ceremony highlight patriarchy and husband's power.

Let's talk about the dowry. The original intention of the dowry is to regard women as a burden, an extra mouth to eat, so the woman's father's family has to pay a sum of money as compensation. It also symbolizes a transfer of power, from now on patriarchy becomes husband power.

For ordinary women, the times are like this and this matter just passes, but for Tia, it is not acceptable to the emperor, whether it is "being regarded as a burden" or "patriarchy changes to husband power", so the custom of dowry alone is worth talking about.

There must be five or six similar cultural customs, if not ten, and Vespa feels dizzy when he thinks about it, and doesn't know how to deal with it.

The customs of this world are somewhat different from those of the original world, because there are gifted people, and gifted people, regardless of gender, can form an absolute advantage in physical or intellectual strength over the other party. Therefore, although the previous world is imperfect, the Romans in this world already have a set of procedures that are roughly equivalent to "marriage into the wife's family".

The problem is that both Orville and Tia are powerful figures in the Roman Empire. The Romans in this world also believe that marrying into the wife's family is extremely shameful and not worth telling outsiders. Accepting marriage into the wife's family is almost equal to giving up political rights, which is at least a loss of face. Orville can be thick-skinned and not care about criticism, but he has to consider the consequences, and the same goes for Vespa and Tia.

After hearing this, Tia realized that there are many complicated things behind marriage: "Will this not cause a lot of trouble for you or Orville?"

Vespa smiled and shook his head: "To say trouble is definitely there, but we can't not do it because of trouble. I will make things go as smoothly as possible. There is no need to delay the time with an engagement ceremony. You can just get married directly. You are all old, especially you.

Although the most suitable time is the second half of June, I don't have the patience to wait for another ten months. Now is fine, and it's almost okay to have a good day."

Tia obviously felt a little embarrassed and uncomfortable, but still responded with a serious face: "I understand, please rest assured, I will handle things well."

——

On the other side, Orville, who was busy working, had no idea what was waiting for him. He was having a headache for the documents presented by the literati.

He originally thought that the works presented would be serious dramas such as "War in Germany", "History of Rome" and "Perseus and Poseidon", but he didn't expect that many of the works presented were strange and bizarre.

He pointed at a document and raised his eyebrows: "The Book of Love? Did I ask for such books?"

Ptolemy was also speechless: "You asked to release some quotas for voting for people to choose, and this is the choice of the Roman people, hehe. This is because we rejected most of the books with similar contents on the grounds of poor writing and poor content, otherwise you would see things like "Open Lady Claudia" and "Beautiful Old Woman". At least this person's writing rhetoric is acceptable, and he knows how to quote classics, but the things he wrote are not humane."

Ptolemy was not good at rhetoric, but he knew astronomy and mathematics, which made him a guest of honor in the Library of Alexandria. He was a normal and conservative ancient man, and of course he looked down on these explicit works.

Orwell originally thought that letting the common people elect themselves would elect some kind of people's literature, but he didn't expect that everyone would watch the fun and choose a bunch of improper books. Perhaps it can be considered as people's literature, after all, it is also what everyone expects.

Basically, Orwell can only comfort himself with this reason. It is not appropriate to break his promise. He can only keep his promise and make the book. Since Ptolemy looked down on it but still chose to let the book pass, there must be a reason.

He looked at the author's name with a headache, and then he couldn't take his eyes off it-Ovid's name was clearly marked on it.

Combined with the name of the work, related memories suddenly emerged from his mind.

Due to cultural and time barriers, Orwell had no impression of works such as "Kama Sutra" or "Love Song", but some works can break these barriers, such as "Metamorphoses".

Dante's "Divine Comedy" was largely derived from it. Among the four ghosts that Dante saw in hell, Ovid can be ranked alongside Homer. Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer and others were more or less influenced by "Metamorphoses". Later, Goethe, Moliere and others also highly praised "Metamorphoses". It can be said that this book has a great influence and significance.

But what Orville was thinking about was not the joy and excitement of meeting a great man, but another kind of excitement.

[It turned out to be you, kid! ]

When Orwell read Greek mythology, he was also curious about why the gods in it were so morally corrupt and had no personal cultivation, lagging behind his peers. Later, he learned that the Greek mythology read by modern people was influenced to a certain extent by Ovid's "Metamorphoses".

To put it nicely, his works have humanistic colors and simple ancient atheistic characteristics, pulling gods down from the altar and treating them as human beings. To put it bluntly, the gods in them do not do divine things. For example, Zeus does not have the glorious and majestic image of "the father of gods and men", "the far-sighted Zeus" and "the king of Olympus" in "Theogony". He is more of a lecher with low morals.

In his description, the king of gods Zeus seduced the goddess Europa and had an affair with the mother of Hercules. The queen of heaven Hera tortured the beautiful woman Igus to death out of jealousy. The goddess of wisdom Athena was jealous of a weaver and turned her into a spider. The virgin goddess Artemis turned an innocent Greek noble who accidentally saw her bathing into a deer and let him be bitten to death by his own hounds.

These are not isolated cases. In his works, to put it bluntly, the male gods are lustful and the goddesses are jealous. It seems that he is writing about the Greek gods, but in fact many people think that he is writing about the extravagant and licentious Roman nobles at that time.