Chương 97: The Greatest Showman

"The fastest solution to the current crisis is to draw on the public treasury to support the banks. That is the only way to restore the citizens' trust that their money will be returned. Once that trust is back, the panic will subside, and the crowds will stop swarming the Forum""You're right, Atticus. But the situation in the Senate isn't exactly favorable right now," Cicero said, sighing as he walked.

He glanced at his companion, Atticus—his oldest friend and perhaps the only man with whom he shared a truly honest bond. While Cicero navigated the treacherous waters of the Senate, Atticus turned his talents to private enterprise. Leveraging his family inheritance, he had built a vast network of businesses, from moneylending and gladiator schools to one of the Republic's finest publishing workshop.

"What do you mean by 'unfavorable'?"

"Cato has opened his estate to house the victims. He's been vocally opposed to the banks from the start, calling them parasites feeding on the Republic," Cicero explained. As they walked, they passed huddles of citizens with hollow eyes and grim expressions.

"There's a growing faction arguing that we should let the banks collapse. They claim the blood and sweat of Rome's sons shouldn't be used to support greedy speculators ruined by their own arrogance."

"On moral grounds, they may have a point," Atticus mused.

"But if the banks are not rescued, thousands of ordinary citizens will lose every sesterce they've ever saved. They'll never entrust their money to such banks and foundations again" Before patricians and politicians turned moneylending into a vast business, the ordinary plebeians had limited options. Where there was a need for coin, there were always moneylenders. In the old days, citizens were forced to borrow from predatory moneylenders at ruinous interest rates just to survive a bad harvest or winter.

"The banks and foundations offered credit at far lower rates. If they vanish, it is the common people who will suffer most."

"I agree. We need restraint and supervision, not outright abolition." Cicero sighed heavily. He couldn't see a way out. If Rome spiraled into total chaos, the result would be catastrophic. He feared a scoundrel like Catiline would rise again, leading a mob of the desperate and the ruined to burn the city down. After all, who is more dangerous than a man who has lost everything? Suddenly, the crowd around them shifted. People began rushing down the street.

"Is it true?"

"I saw it with my own eyes! There are sheets of papyrus all over the walls!"

"Hurry! I have to see this for myself!" Cicero and Atticus exchanged a surprised look before following the running crowd.

"Let's see what caught their attention."

Paper. A flood of white paper had appeared across the streets of Rome overnight.

"When did all this get put up?"

"Must have happened in the dead of night. The whole street is covered with them." The citizens of Rome stood in stunned silence. It was common for a few political flyers to appear during election season, but usually only in small numbers. To see thousands upon thousands of identical notices covering walls, pillars, and public buildings across the city in the city was unprecedented. But it was the content of the flyers that truly shook the city.

"You can read, can't you? Tell us what it says!"

"Let's see...

'Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus, in response to the crisis now afflicting the people of Rome… have pledged their personal fortunes to aid those endangered by the crisis...'""Personal fortunes? They're making sure the bank victims get their money back?"

"It looks like it. It says Crassus has pledged ten million, while Pompey and Caesar are contributing eight million sesterces each."

"Wait! How much?!" The crowd gasped. Even a hundred thousand sesterces was a fortune beyond the wildest dreams of the average plebeian. But eight million? Ten million?

"Does this mean we're safe? With that much money, everyone can get their deposits back!"

"Don't be a fool. Rumor has it that more than thirty million sesterces are deposited across the city."

"Thirty million? So even this princely sum isn't enough?"

"Wait! There's more written here!" The announcement did not stop with the three men's contributions. A postscript was added beneath the names of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus.

"It says Caesar is also pledging every single sesterce of the spoils from his campaign in Hispania!"

"The spoils too? On top of the eight million?" The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Yes! And look—it lists the locations of the new silver mines he discovered in Hispania." A heavy, awestruck silence fell over the gathered crowd.

"This is staggering. They say Gaius Caesar is returning to Rome even now. We'll see if he's brought the silver with him."

"Wasn't he supposed to arrive for the Floralia?"

"I don't know, but the flyers say he's coming early. He must be coming to save the city." But it wasn't just the message that drew the attention of the more observant citizens. A few men squinted at the notices, comparing them.

"Look at this one. And the one we saw on the previous street. The handwriting... it's exactly the same."

"You're right. Even the best scribe in the Republic couldn't reproduce the same hand this perfectly across a thousand sheets." The thousands of flyers across Rome featured the same strokes, the same size of letters, and the same spacing.

"What kind of witchcraft is this?"

"Crassus has pledged ten million, while Caesar and I have pledged eight million each to cover the citizens' losses." Pompey stared at the flyer in his hand. His daughter, Pompeia, held an identical copy.

"A total of twenty-six million sesterces," she said softly.

"Enough to buy a small kingdom."

"If we give this money to the citizens, aren't we just rewarding the incompetent bankers for their own failures?" Pompey muttered. He had agreed to Lucius's proposal, but he was still wrestling with the sheer scale of the gamble. The plan was unprecedented: the three most powerful houses in Rome would provide the banks with urgent loans, allowing the banks to pay those who demanded their deposits.

"If this resolves the panic, we stand to gain immensely," Pompeia countered.

"Once trust is restored, we can get our money back, with interest. In fact, we'll make a profit; the banks have promised us ridiculous rates just to lay hands on our silver. They were desperate."

"But there is no guarantee this will work, Pompeia," Pompey said, sinking into his chair.

"If trust isn't restored, our silver will vanish without a trace. Crassus can weather a loss of eight million. I cannot." The silver Pompey had pledged was the war chest he had meticulously built for his next consular campaign and his ambitious public building projects. If this vanished, he would be politically crippled and forced to take drastic measures to replenish his treasury.

"If this fails... your marriage arrangements will have to change. Crassus knows this. That's why he was so quick to agree to this."

"..." Pompeia nodded in silence, her eyes fixed on the flyer. Every sheet featured the exact same script. She knew what it meant. Lucius hadn't used a thousand scribes. He had carved the letters into wood and used them as a giant stamp. Who else but Lucius would think of producing so many identical notices?

"It won't fail, Father. Because I believe in him." She met her father's gaze.

"I believe Lucius has a plan."

I never thought I'd be using woodblock printing to solve a financial crisis. Technically, it wasn't a press yet—more like woodblock printing. Carving the letters in reverse into a wooden slab and pressing it onto paper was crude, but for a one-page flyer, it was revolutionary. It removed the human error and the time-intensive labor of a thousand scribes.

"Are you absolutely sure about this, young master?" Felix asked, peering out of the wagon.

"About what?"

"We've taken every bit of silver we possess.. And we're hauling the silver from Crassus and Pompey as well."

"The most important part of that flyer wasn't the words, Felix. It was the promise of the silver," I replied, bracing myself as the wagon hit a bump. I have no idea how people in this era travel long distances without their spines turning to dust.

"Promising to pay isn't enough. To stop a panic, you need to show the people the physical proof. You need to overwhelm their fear with the sight of real silver, right before their eyes."

"But the silver mines in Hispania have only just begun production," Felix noted.

"The silver won't arrive at the Temple of Saturn for months."

"Which is why we need a spectacle." I patted the heavy iron-bound chests stacked in the wagon. They were overflowing with silver coins—my personal fortune, combined with the rest provided by Crassus and Pompey.

"We have to time our entry with Father's homecoming. We're going to parade these chests through the streets and show the panicked crowd the sight of twenty-six million sesterces."

"So... we're making it look like the silver came directly from Hispania with him," Felix sighed.

"You're basically deceiving the entire city of Rome."

"The fact that we found the mines is the truth, Felix. The silver exists," I shrugged.

"But to convince the crowd, mere words are worthless. There is no better argument than a mountain of silver right in front of their eyes." Now, all I had to do was join Father. If he was the man I knew him to be, he would have realized the gravity of the situation the moment he heard the news.

"There's no guarantee he has even left the Rubicon," Felix whispered.

"We sent the messenger, but they would still be on their way."

"Why don't we just do what you did with Palmolive?" Felix suggested.

"Claim the gods gave you a revelation that the crisis is over?"

"The master is the Pontifex Maximus, after all. If he says the gods have decreed the banks safe, who would dare question him?"

"He could," I nodded.

"But we can't invoke 'divine revelation' every time we face a problem. Even if it were true, if we keep relying on religion like this..." The people would eventually see through it as a political tool. The Roman mob took their omens seriously, but they were also cynical enough to recognize when a politician was exploiting the gods for political advantage. Augustus, the first emperor of the Roman Empire, understood this—he never claimed to be a god while he was alive; he merely had his dead great-uncle deified.

Emperors who claimed to be the living son of Jupiter, like Commodus, tended to meet very messy ends. To play god was to come dangerously close to kingship. And Romans hated kings more than anything.

"We don't need the gods for this. We have silver and three powerful names." Just then, the wagon lurched to a halt. The driver leaned back, pointing toward the horizon.

"Look! Something's coming from the north!" Felix and I jumped down from the wagon. In the distance, black dots were moving along the road. I pulled out my telescope and held it to my eye. The glare of the sun was bright, but as I adjusted the lens, the image came into focus. There was my father, clad in his white priestly robes, mounted on his horse. Behind him trailed a column of his personal guard.

"It's my father." He must have left the Rubicon the second news arrived. But then, I saw something else. Something was floating in the air above Father and his soldiers. Hundreds of shimmering, silver glints were dancing in the sunlight. It took a moment of squinting through the lens to realize what they were.

"Are those... kites?" Why was he marching with dozens of kites overhead?

"You covered the kites in silver?"

"Seeing is believing, Lucius. The people needed a sign," my father laughed as he dismounted. I stood beside him, staring up at the sky. The kites were shimmering brilliantly, reflecting the afternoon sun like a fleet of fallen stars. It wasn't plating—It looked as though they'd brushed the paper with fine silver dust. It reminded me of the gilded manuscripts that Islamic calligraphers would produce centuries later. I couldn't believe he turned my kites into a divine spectacle of light.

"The core of this crisis is trust. If we can restore the citizens' confidence, the panic ends."

"I agree." I gestured toward the long line of wagons behind me.

"I've brought all the silver I could scrape together. It should be enough to mark your return in fitting fashion."

"A Triumph would have been simpler, but..." Father stretched out his arm, a familiar grin on his face.

"Riding into Rome to save it alongside my son is far more poetic. And where on earth did you find this much silver?"

"We can talk about it later, Father." I had learned many lessons from my father. As the saying goes, what separates the ordinary from the unforgettable is... Presentation.

"Shall we, Father? Let's give Rome something to believe in."

"You mean silver?" I smiled.

"Two Caesars." Then I glanced at the wagons and added,"And some silver too."