I Rule Rome with a God-Tier AI-Chapter 157: The Bread and the Ledger

The great projects had begun. The sound of legionary hammers now echoed through the Subura, and the mint worked day and night to forge Sabina's new, pure silver. But Alex knew that sewers and sound money, while vital, were merely treating the symptoms of Rome's sickness. The deepest, most chronic disease was in its stomach.

In Sabina's office, a place that had become a second throne room for the practical realities of the Empire, she unrolled a large map of the Mediterranean. It was covered in her own neat, precise markings, showing the sea lanes of the great grain fleets that were the lifeblood of the capital.

"The city's health may be improving, Caesar," she said, her voice sharp and focused. "But its stomach is as vulnerable as it has ever been. Rome does not feed itself. It is a head with a mouth, connected by a long and fragile neck to the grain fields of Egypt and Africa." She tapped a finger on the port of Alexandria. "We are one bad harvest in the Nile delta, one major storm in the Sicilian Strait, one pirate fleet growing bold, away from mass starvation. And starvation in Rome means riots in the streets and a knife in the Emperor's back. This is a strategic vulnerability on par with the coal plague."

Alex nodded grimly. He had seen the same vulnerability in Lyra's projections. The Cura Annonae, the grain dole that fed Rome's masses, was both the foundation of imperial stability and its greatest weakness. He had come prepared.

In the nights prior, he had tasked Lyra with a deep analysis of Italian agriculture. The AI had sifted through two centuries of historical records—land surveys, tax receipts, anecdotal accounts from writers like Pliny and Columella—and combined it with its own 21st-century knowledge of soil science and agronomy. The conclusion was stark. The Italian peninsula, particularly the great latifundia estates owned by the senatorial class, was exhausted. Generations of wheat monoculture had stripped the soil of its vitality. Yields were falling, forcing Rome into its fatal dependency on imported grain.

Lyra had then cross-referenced this problem with the contents of the Aethel-tech seed bank. She had presented a simple, elegant, and revolutionary solution: Solanum tuberosum. The potato. A humble tuber from a continent no Roman even dreamed of. Lyra's analysis was glowing. It grew in poor, acidic soil where wheat would fail. Its caloric yield per acre was nearly triple that of grain. It was resistant to most forms of blight that affected wheat. And, critically, it was a root vegetable that would break the cycle of soil exhaustion, actually improving the land for future crops.

Now, Alex had to translate this scientific solution into a form the Romans could swallow. He had summoned Lucius Volcatius, a senator from his new "Party of Jupiter," to the meeting. Volcatius was a pragmatic, no-nonsense man in his fifties, a former legionary commander who now owned vast, though not particularly profitable, estates in Etruria. He was the perfect test case: a practical landowner, loyal to Alex, but deeply conservative in his ways.

"The gods have shown me a new gift for the people of Italia," Alex began, adopting the now-familiar cadence of a divine messenger. "The forces of decay we fight have weakened our very soil. For too long, we have relied on the harvests of distant lands. The time has come to restore the strength of our own fields." He looked at Volcatius. "The gift is not a new type of grain. It is a humble root. One that thrives in poor soil, that replenishes the earth where wheat has drained it, and which can feed a farmer's entire family from a tiny plot of land."

He described the potato, its appearance, its hardiness. Volcatius listened patiently, his brow furrowed in concentration. When Alex finished, the senator did not look inspired; he looked deeply skeptical.

"Caesar," he said, his voice hesitant but firm. "Your vision is... bold. But I am a farmer. And you want Roman farmers, Roman citizens, to eat... roots?" He shook his head. "Our people live on bread and circuses. Panem et circenses. It is the bedrock of our culture. Not roots and circuses. Forgive me, Caesar, but they will see this as animal fodder. The plebs will think they are being fed pig food. My tenant farmers will refuse to plant it. They will fear they cannot sell it. And they would be right. The merchants in the Forum would laugh me out of the city if I tried to sell them a cartload of muddy roots."

He had articulated the problem perfectly. It wasn't logistical or agricultural. It was cultural. The inertia of two thousand years of Mediterranean food culture was a more formidable obstacle than any barren soil.

Alex looked to Sabina. This was her domain. She met the challenge with a cool, analytical smile. "The Senator is correct. We cannot force the people to eat this 'earth-apple,'" she said, coining a more palatable name on the spot. "So we do not. We incentivize the farmers, and we manufacture demand from the top down. We create a new market where none exists."

Her mind was already working, devising the economic architecture. "We will use the power of the treasury. I will issue a procurement order, a state contract, announcing that for the next three years, the state will purchase every earth-apple grown on Italian soil at a guaranteed, premium price—twenty percent above the market price for wheat. The entire supply will be used as military rations for the legions on the frontier."

Volcatius's eyes widened. "The farmers will grow whatever the state pays them to grow," he admitted. "If the price is right, they will grow rocks. That will get it in the ground. But that is only half the battle. How do we get it in their mouths?"

This was Volcatius's area of expertise: the mind of the Roman landowner and the social dynamics of the elite. "We must make it fashionable," he declared, catching on to Sabina's strategy. "We cannot introduce it as a food for the poor. We must introduce it as a delicacy for the rich. We will host a series of lavish public feasts at the palace, sponsored by the Emperor himself in honor of his victories. The guest lists will include every important senator and aristocrat. And the centerpiece of these feasts will be this new root, prepared in a dozen exquisite ways by the Emperor's finest chefs."

He was warming to the idea, his practical mind seeing the path. "We will serve it mashed with expensive olive oil and herbs from Gaul. We will slice it thin and fry it until it is crisp, served with salt from the imperial mines. We will bake it in cream and rare cheeses. We will make it a status symbol. If the rich are seen eating it, if they speak of its unique flavor and texture, the poor will aspire to it. We must make it desirable before we make it common."

Alex saw the final piece of the puzzle, the propaganda layer that would bind it all together. "And we wrap the entire endeavor in the new faith," he commanded. "This is not merely a new crop; it is a sacred food. A direct gift from the goddess Ceres, who weeps for the tired soil of her beloved Italia. It is blessed by me, as Pontifex Maximus. The priests of our new Curatores Sanitatis will preach its virtues in their public addresses. They will speak of its strength, its vitality, how it cleanses the body and the land. Eating it will not just be fashionable; it will be an act of piety, a way for every citizen to take part in the great purification of Rome."

The plan was complete. It was a perfect, multi-pronged assault on an entrenched cultural problem. It used economic incentives to drive production, cultural manipulation to create demand, and religious propaganda to sanctify the entire process. It was a social engineering project that would take a generation to fully bear fruit, but the blueprint was now drawn.

"It will be done," Volcatius said, his skepticism replaced by the determined energy of a man with a new, profitable, and patriotic mission. "I will begin trials on my own estates in Etruria at once. The soil there is exhausted. It will be the perfect test."

Alex nodded, a deep sense of satisfaction settling over him. He had just taken the first, crucial step toward solving one of Rome's most fatal, long-term flaws. He would arrange for the first samples of the seed potatoes—small, unassuming, and holding the power to change the world—to be delivered to Volcatius from the secret, subterranean vaults of the Institute. The first seeds of his agricultural revolution were now in the ground.