I Rule Rome with a God-Tier AI-Chapter 114: The Queen’s Gambit

While Alex forged a new city of iron and fire on the frontier, Sabina waged her own war in the heart of the Empire. Her battlefield was not a muddy construction site, but the cool, marble halls of Roman finance and politics. Her weapons were not repeating crossbows, but contracts, ledgers, and the cold, hard currency of gold. She was the immovable anchor that held the entire grand enterprise together, and the strain was beginning to show.

The treasury was bleeding. The Parthian tribute, which had seemed like an endless river of gold, was proving to be just barely enough to cover the immense costs of a state engaged in a full-scale industrial and military revolution. The construction of Vulcania was a bottomless pit of expenses. The ongoing mobilization and equipping of the northern legions with new Ignis Steel weapons was another. And all the while, her own brilliant but costly system of bread subsidies kept the ever-hungry city of Rome placid, but at a staggering price. She needed more capital. A massive, immediate influx of it, beyond what even the wealth of Parthia could provide.

She could not raise taxes; that would be political suicide and would contradict Alex's popular image as a benevolent provider. She could not demand forced loans from the senatorial class; that would unite the aristocracy against the regime. She needed a new way, a third way, that would not only fill the treasury but also further solidify her and Alex's grip on power. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

After a week of sleepless nights spent poring over shipping manifests, economic reports, and Lyra's quiet suggestions, she found her answer. It was a plan of such breathtaking financial audacity that it would either save the Empire or shatter its economic foundations completely.

She summoned the masters of Roman wealth to her office. Not the land-rich, tradition-bound senators, but the true engines of the Roman economy: the heads of the great banking families, the masters of the shipping guilds, the silver merchants, the slave traders. These were hard-nosed, pragmatic men who understood risk, leverage, and, above all, profit. They entered her office expecting to be asked for a patriotic, low-interest loan to the state, or to be informed of a new war tax on their enterprises.

Sabina greeted them not as a supplicant, but as a fellow oligarch offering the deal of a lifetime.

"Gentlemen," she began, her voice smooth and confident. "The Emperor has secured the East. Now, he forges a new shield for us in the North. The future of Rome is secure." She let that sink in before delivering her pivot. "But I have come to believe that our greatest future, the true source of our eternal prosperity, lies not in these old, contested lands. It lies in the West."

She unrolled a magnificent, newly drawn map of the Western Mediterranean and the Atlantic coast. It was based on Lyra's satellite data, showing coastlines with an accuracy no Roman had ever seen. She pointed beyond the familiar shores of Gaul and Hispania.

"The Emperor's Institute has been studying ancient, secret texts," she lied, using Alex's now standard and unimpeachable cover story. "Phoenician and Carthaginian sailing charts, long thought lost. They speak of lands beyond the Pillars of Hercules. They speak of a great island, Hibernia, rich in gold and fertile pastures, untouched by Roman civilization. They speak of new sea-lanes to the tin mines of Britannia that would bypass the treacherous northern tribes. They speak of a world of resources and trade, waiting for a power bold enough to claim it."

The men in the room were intrigued, their greedy, ambitious natures stirred by the scent of new markets and untapped wealth.

"I am therefore proposing, by Imperial Decree, the creation of a new, state-sanctioned enterprise," Sabina announced. "A venture to claim this future for Rome. We shall call it the Roman Occidental Trading Company."

She then laid out her revolutionary proposal. This would not be a typical state-run affair. It would be a joint venture, a partnership between the imperial state and private investors. The state, she explained, would provide the initial assets: a fleet of its sturdiest ships, a full cohort of legionaries for protection, and, most importantly, an exclusive, legally binding charter granting the Company a state-enforced monopoly on all trade and resources discovered in these new Western lands.

"The state provides the sword and the authority," she explained. "But it is you, gentlemen, who will provide the financial fuel."

She was proposing the creation of the world's first joint-stock company. The Company's initial capitalization, she explained, would be divided into thousands of shares, or partes, which would be sold to private investors. The capital raised would fund the expeditions, the establishment of trading posts, and the bribes needed to placate local chieftains. In return for their investment, the shareholders would receive a direct, proportional share of all the profits the Company generated.

It was a concept so alien and yet so intoxicatingly simple that the bankers and merchants were momentarily stunned. They were being offered a chance not just to loan money to the state, but to become partners with the state in a grand new venture of exploration and profit. They would own a piece of the conquest.

The excitement in the room was palpable. They could see the fortunes to be made.

"Of course," Sabina added smoothly, preparing to spring her trap, "an enterprise of such vital importance to the future prosperity and security of Rome must be supported by all of its leading citizens. Therefore, the Emperor will ask the Senate to pass a small, supporting law."

She looked around the room, meeting the eyes of each man. "To ensure the success of this great patriotic venture, the law will require that all citizens whose estates are valued above one million sestertii"—a category that included every single senator and wealthy patrician—"must invest a minimum of ten percent of their declared assets in the Company's initial stock offering."

The trap was sprung. The air in the room went still. The merchants and bankers, most of whom were from the equestrian class, suddenly understood. Sabina was not just raising capital. She was launching a financial coup. The richest senators, the old patrician families who were her and Alex's primary political rivals, the men who secretly supported Pertinax and chafed under their new, efficient rulers, would be legally forced to liquidate ten percent of their ancestral wealth—their lands, their villas, their mines—and invest it in Alex and Sabina's high-risk venture.

If the Company succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, the senators would get richer, yes, but the state, as the largest shareholder, would become infinitely richer and more powerful. If the Company failed, if the ships sank or the expeditions found nothing, the treasury would lose its initial investment, but the senatorial class would have a tenth of their family fortunes wiped out in a single stroke, shattering their political power base for a generation. It was a move of breathtaking financial audacity.

A patrician banker in the room, a man named Cassius Longinus with known ties to Pertinax's faction, finally found his voice. He stood up, his face pale with a mixture of fury and disbelief.

"This... this is extortion!" he sputtered. "This is not the Roman way! You would force us to gamble our ancestral wealth, the bedrock of the Republic, on a fantasy of ghost ships and mythical islands?"

Sabina looked at him, her expression turning from one of a business partner to that of a predator. Her eyes were as cold and hard as the new steel being forged in Vulcania.

"The Emperor is forging a New Rome, Senator," she said, her voice dropping to a low, dangerous purr. "The old ways of hoarding wealth in land while the state starves for capital are becoming... unprofitable."

She had just declared total economic war on the old guard. They could either join the new world, or be financially broken by it. There was no third option.