Catullus was very disdainful, and he first pleaded, "Are you not the ones chosen by the law and the people? In order to ensure the fairness of the vote, I can send my servants to escort you out safely, but remember that under the premise of fairness, the clerk has already counted a total of fifty-five people to decide whether the defendant is guilty or not. ”

Soon, the servants held up three clay urns for voting, but the results of the submissions made Catullus very angry: out of fifty-five votes, forty-nine were NonLiquet abstentions, and Catullus almost died of anger. "Jury protection activated, vote in three days!" He announced the resolution.

"Your Excellency the Attorney-General, the voting should be completed in the early morning of the next day, and if too many abstain, the second or even the third round will be held until the results come out, which is the fairest!" Cicero pleaded loudly.

But Catullus was so tired that he asked Cicero to go back and recuperate for the time being, and in three days he was convinced that there would be a fair result, at which time he would ask for the strengthening of the court's security and the forcible dispersal of the "bed bugs and ants" that inhabited the sewers and floating islands, so that they could not continue to intimidate or cause trouble.

Zuihou, Calabis was lying upside down on the stretcher, and Claudius, Anthony, Curio, and Claudia personally carried him out of the courtroom, "Miserable, the last time I came out was much more majestic than this time." Calabis said with a sweaty face full of pain and self-deprecation, while the people on both sides roared with joy, shouting for the heroes who dared to confront the Senate faction of Catullus and Cicero.

"Listen, Claudius. Cicero and his wife had a small villa in Apilon. Then there were villa estates in Pompeii and Naples. His own inheritance, together with the costs of his defense over the years, amounted to eighty or ninety thousand dinars, and Lenchat's dowry was about one hundred thousand dinars. Calabis endured the pain, and whispered to the four, "Find a good but capable slave, and bring a gift that goes beyond Cicero's total fortune - to buy at least thirty members of the jury, so that you can win the battle." ”

In these three days, there was indeed a middle-aged shrewd slave. One by one, knocking on the doors of the apartments of the jury members of the various districts, and enthusiastically sending money bags and fine wine inside, it is greedy for money; will also send high-class prostitutes and delicate children inside, which is lustful; There are also those who send severed boar heads and bloody butcher knives into it, which is cowardly.

Then Calabis commissioned a slave hired by the name to pay the matter with a fine of ten thousand ceses, and he himself carried a full back of "flowers". Lying on the sedan chair, I went to Apilon's villa to recuperate.

Leo was already able to walk under the flower gallery. He would lay a small plank on the log, and then roll the round walnuts down the top, and scatter the row of small walnuts below, and have a great time, while Calabis was still lying on the soft couch, holding in his hand a small book bought from the streets of Tuscany, and he was reading about the customs and geography of various places, and he was also amused by the number of fallacies in it, and Potti sat beside him, and helped his back to apply the medicine that Timosius had sent him.

The gifts of the Claudius siblings were delivered to the villa two days later than those of the Lord, and the former and the latter were equally grateful to him, and the gifts were piled up: clipboards, spices, silk, pepper beans, bronze vessels, etc., and Calabis picked out a clipboard and gave it to Porti, "for you to keep an account." Potty shook his head and smiled, and took the clipboard.

"Needless to say, your master must have won the lawsuit." Calabis asked the gift-giving slave.

The slave nodded, "The final vote was thirty-one votes to twenty-four. Calabis didn't know who the good Samaritan who confiscated the money and did things, but he could imagine the hardships of Cicero's life after that, and there was no shortage of enemies in the city of Rome, but it would be a misfortune for everyone to provoke an enemy like Claudius, and he turned his head to look at Potti, who was staring at the letters on the clipboard, and knew that he could leave Rome with peace of mind, and that some people would be grateful to him, and some people would not care about him, so that Poti and his children would be safe.

Sure enough, in the depiction of the slave, Calabis seemed to see the real scene in the courtroom, and after the voting results came out, Claudius raised his eyebrows, not only shouted to the people that he would run for tribune soon, but also threatened and rebuked Cicero, saying that no one in the jury wanted to believe his nonsense, and he would definitely take revenge after he became tribune, Cicero although he was a little panicked, but he still kept his composure, "Twenty-four people believe that you are guilty, and the other thirty-one people also believe that you are guilty, and they are waiting for you to take the money out, before I will find you guilty. And the exasperated Catullus, who regarded this trial as his own and the greatest stain on the history of Roman law, would thereafter sarcastically say in the squares or in the agora, whenever any of the members of the jury were on the jury: "I now understand why you applied for the protection of the servants and the guards that day, in order to protect the bribes you have received!" ”

About a few months later, the old nobleman Catullus was actually to death.

"Before the next storm, there will be a brief lull in the city of Rome. At least after the results of the tribune election are in, the wind will blow again. "Calabis slowly put the book down, when a priest came running quickly, and said that this is your letter, from the island of Sardinia.

Could it be Yulia's letter?

Curious, Calabis opened the writing board in the box, which was full of the little widow's handwriting, in all fairness, the little widow Yulia received a good education, this letter should have been written by her own hand, and he had become familiar with her handwriting on countless debt receipts, neat, regular and delicate, first from left to right, and then from right to left, with an "S" shaped layout, which was the habit of Greek writing.

In the letter, Yulia was also very polite, and there was a certain gap between her real image and her real person, she first warmly thanked herself in Ophelnouri for her and her family (hey, is it necessary for you and your family to be separated), and now that everything was on track in the manor, she had a happy Goddess of Happiness Day, and made a very happy wish to the goddess, and extended the same blessing to Calabis and his women and children. Subsequently, Yulia instructed Calabis to present the token to the man behind him to avoid unnecessary trouble between the two parties. As for who was behind it, Yulia seemed to know in her heart, and she asked that when Calabis went to Lusitania soon, she could take the time to come back to Ophelenu, and she would repay it.

Alas? Now, when Calabis heard of it, especially the woman's reward and reward, he had a faint feeling of electrocution. (To be continued......)