I Rule Rome with a God-Tier AI-Chapter 179: The Politics of Piety

While one brave man walked into the wilderness to hunt a phantom, Alex turned his attention to the more immediate, and in some ways more dangerous, phantoms closer to home. The reports from Perennis were a constant, nagging reminder that the war for the Danube was only one of two fronts. The second was a silent, undeclared war for the loyalty of Northern Italy, and its unwilling general was a powerful, respected, and deeply resentful senator named Cassius Longinus.

Alex sat in the temporary headquarters of his "Party of Jupiter," a large villa on the outskirts of Vulcania that his loyal senators had appropriated for their use. Across a table laden with maps and dispatches sat Scipio and Volcatius. Their faces were grim.

"Longinus is a problem," Alex stated, tapping a scroll from Perennis that detailed the latest secret meetings at the senator's vast estates near Aquileia. "He is respected. He is wealthy. His family name carries immense weight in the north. And he is skillfully painting me as a radical tyrant who is trampling on Roman tradition and bleeding the heartland dry to fight a common barbarian rabble. We cannot afford a rebellion at our back while we have a horde at our front."

Scipio, a man whose solution to most problems involved a direct and forceful application of steel, slammed his fist on the table. "Then let us solve it in the Roman way. Send Perennis's Frumentarii. Arrest Longinus for sedition. Bring him to you in chains. Make an example of him. The others will fall into line out of fear." 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

Alex shook his head, rejecting the simple, brutal solution. "No. Longinus has been too clever for that. He has spoken no open treason. He has formed no army. He has simply... expressed his concerns to his friends. To arrest a man for speaking his mind in his own home would make him a martyr. It would prove his every accusation against me. It would turn every wavering landowner in the north against us. We will not fight him in the shadows with assassins and spies. We will fight him in the brilliant light of the Forum, with the very weapon he claims to own: tradition."

This was a new kind of war, and it required a new kind of strategy, one born of Alex's unique perspective. He had spent hours with Lyra, not analyzing troop movements, but compiling a deep, psychological dossier on his new political enemy. He had Lyra sift through every available record on Cassius Longinus: his family history stretching back to the Republic, his voting record in the Senate, his known business dealings, his public speeches, even the records of his family's religious affiliations and temple patronages.

The data had formed a clear profile. Longinus was a staunch traditionalist, a man who genuinely believed in the old ways. He was the single largest private patron of the ancient and deeply revered Temple of Mars Ultor—Mars the Avenger—in Rome, the temple originally built by Augustus to celebrate his victory over Caesar's assassins. Longinus was a man who cloaked his political ambition in a sincere and powerful piety. Alex now intended to use that piety as a weapon against him.

He laid out his plan for his loyal senators, a subtle and deeply cynical campaign of political theater. He turned first to Volcatius.

"Volcatius, you are the key to the first step," Alex began. "You are one of them. A northern landowner. You speak their language. You will request a formal meeting with Longinus and the other leading dissenters at his villa. You will go not as my agent, but as a concerned peer."

"And what shall I say to them?" Volcatius asked, his brow furrowed. "Argue the merits of the war?"

"No," Alex said. "You will do the opposite. You will not argue with them. You will agree with them. You will listen to their complaints about the slave levy, about the guild conscriptions, and you will nod your head and say that the Emperor's new policies are indeed harsh, that the burden is indeed heavy. You will win their trust by sharing their grievance."

He leaned forward, explaining the twist. "And then, once you have their ear, you will frame their sacrifice in the only language a true Roman traditionalist can understand. You will invoke the spirit of Cincinnatus, the noble farmer who left his plow to become dictator, saved the Republic, and then returned to his fields. You will tell them that this is their Cincinnatus moment. That the Emperor is asking them, the noble landowners of Italy, to make a great but temporary sacrifice for the salvation of the state. You will be the voice of reasonable, reluctant patriotism, making their rigid, absolute opposition seem selfish and shortsighted by comparison."

Volcatius smiled slowly, seeing the cleverness of the approach. He would be the sympathetic peer, gently guiding them towards the path of duty.

Alex then turned to Scipio. "While Volcatius is planting the seeds of doubt in the north, you, Scipio, will return to Rome. You will deliver a speech in the Senate, one that will echo across the Empire. You will announce that I, as Pontifex Maximus, in my divine wisdom and in recognition of the immense sacrifices being made by the northern nobility, am creating a new and prestigious holy order."

He paused for dramatic effect. "You will call it 'The Sacred Brotherhood of Mars Victor.' Membership, you will announce, will be offered to all major landowners in the northern provinces who have met their slave and guild levies in full. Members of this brotherhood will be granted special public honors. They will be given significant tax exemptions for a decade after the war is won. And most importantly, their family names will be inscribed on a new, magnificent bronze altar to be erected at the Temple of Mars Ultor itself—the very temple that Cassius Longinus so piously patrons."

The trap was laid. It was a work of diabolical genius. Alex was creating a new, exclusive, high-status club that rewarded compliance with honors, wealth, and, most importantly, public piety. He was offering the very men who opposed him a choice. They could continue to meet in secret, to grumble about the loss of their slaves and profits, and be seen by the rest of Rome as unpatriotic, impious men who shirked their duty in a time of crisis. Or, they could join the Sacred Brotherhood of Mars Victor, receive public praise, secure their future fortunes, and have their names forever associated with the god of war and the salvation of the Empire.

He was forcing them to choose between their private grievances and their public reputation. And for a Roman aristocrat, reputation was everything. Cassius Longinus would be completely isolated. If he refused to join the brotherhood founded in honor of his own patron god, he would look like a hypocrite, a man who cared more for his lost profits than for honoring Mars himself. If he did join, he would be publicly endorsing the very war effort and the Emperor he was secretly trying to undermine. He would be forced to bend the knee, not by a legion, but by his own piety.

The two senators left the villa, their minds buzzing with the sheer, cynical brilliance of the plan. They were no longer just politicians; they were now active players in a sophisticated psychological war. Alex watched them go, a cold satisfaction settling over him. He was learning. He was moving beyond Lyra's raw data, beyond the simple application of future knowledge. He was learning to fight like a Roman, to wield the intangible weapons of faith, honor, and tradition with a skill and ruthlessness that would have made Augustus himself proud.