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(Simulator) Chapter 100: Even Wild Beasts Have a Home in Italy, But What About You?
🕑 Added 2024-09-29 15:44:06 +0000 UTCMadness—!
A suffocating madness was spreading through the hearts of the crowd.
And now, no one was angry at Tiberius anymore.
Instead, they were furious at the raw truth he had laid bare.
Once people learn the truth, they can no longer live in complacency!
And now, as the bloody truth was exposed before them, what choice would they make?
In the central square, Night stood among the crowd, observing every expression on their faces.
The precise intelligence and brutally honest depiction that Tiberius presented were, of course, not purely his own observations.
Much of it was Night’s doing.
When he first laid this truth before Tiberius, weren’t the Gracchi brothers themselves just as shocked, disbelieving, and furious as everyone else is now?"
After encountering the deeper darkness, the two brothers chose to bear the heavy burden and move forward.
Even as they further understood how many enemies and how much resistance they would face to change Rome, they did not give up.
Now Night wondered how many among these thousands of commoners would have the courage to rise up.
‘It’s coming—the red storm.
It will soon rise from the plains.’
His gaze grew deep as he looked toward the Senate hall in the distance.
Roman aristocrats, I’ve made my move.
Are you ready to face the storm?
A new Rome, born from this storm, will be completely transformed.
All the decay and corruption will be swept away.
When countless voices shout in unison, will even the gods above tremble in fear?
Whether true gods will fear, Night did not know,
But he knew that some people were certainly growing uneasy.
Tiberius had become the one to expose the truth, revealing the true faces of the aristocracy to the world:
"When everyone is only focused on climbing higher, desperately striving to become governors, it’s solely to seize more land from the commoners.
By the time they return to Rome after their terms end, they can never again be the simple, unadorned Roman citizens they once were.
They enjoy the land irrigated with blood, but forget that once, in Greece and on the land of Italy, the same pattern existed.
Large estates grew larger, and small farms were driven to extinction.
Mighty Greece disappeared from the stage of history because of this.
Yet our people did not learn from history’s lessons.
Instead, we repeat the same mistakes.
I am heartbroken for Rome today.
It is sick—so sick that it could fall at any moment.
Luckily, we’ve caught it in time, and there’s still a chance to change everything.
On the Adriatic coast, the price of a common laborer is 10 aurei (approximately 300 U.S. dollars).
Skilled workers or educated individuals cost slightly more, and a young girl who can play the lyre can be sold for at least 30 aurei.
The freedom of a person can be reduced to something so cheap.
More and more people, unable to survive, fall from citizens and freemen to selling themselves into slavery.
But the slave masters won’t be merciful enough to support these people.
They can beat, humiliate, and abuse their slaves as they please; if they’re unhappy, they can even kill them outright.
With the continued victories in war, great wealth was obtained, but it only made the rich richer and the poor poorer.
The gap between the two classes has grown wider.
Now, the people of Rome have completely lost any shared life goals and ideals.
When soldiers return to their hometowns, they find that the home full of childhood memories is long gone.
They find vast estates before them, estates just like those they had seen surrounding Carthage.
Their neighbors are nowhere to be found; their farms have been taken by the wealthy, and even their families have disappeared.
All they see are sunlit villas, where the rich, who seized their farms, now live."
Tiberius grew more impassioned as he spoke, and finally, he delivered the powerful words that have echoed through history,
"On the land of Italy, even the wild beasts have their dens.
They make their nests and build their homes there.
Yet you, who have shed blood for Italy, have earned only wealth for others.
You are the masters of this world, yet you do not have a single piece of land to call your own."
"Can you accept such a thing—such an injustice?!!" Tiberius roared his final question.
And from the crowd rose a thunderous wave of angry cries—"No!! No!!! No!!!!"
"Absolutely not! Their land, their interests—there is no way they will give them up to those aristocrats who only know how to sit back and enjoy the fruits of others' labor!"
Compared to the Rome of old, rich, powerful, and filled with glory and joy, with its wild and brutal rush of blood and violence, many had been lost in a dreamlike daze, believing they lived in a beautiful world.
But when someone finally tells you that it isn’t so, that the so-called 'beauty' is nothing more than a façade, it’s like a veil is lifted.
Only when faced with the hard facts do many begin to realize why that supposed happiness had always felt a little off.
Why, in mighty Rome, were they still occasionally subject to unfair treatment?
What they once thought was merely personal misfortune turned out to be a shackle they had placed upon themselves.
Tiberius looked out at the crowd, now fully riled up, their thunderous roars shaking the ground.
He felt a deep sense of awe and excitement in his soul.
'Have I succeeded?'
'No, have we succeeded, Night?!' (Gaius Gracchus: And what about me, brother? Just thanking Night, huh? Guess I’ll leave then?)
He felt deeply grateful for Night's final training session the night before.
At first, even when Night presented Tiberius with the cold, naked facts—the dark truths that consumed lives—Tiberius found it hard to believe.
But a little investigation showed that those numbers were accurate.
But knowing they were true made it even more terrifying to reveal them all.
Doing so would cut the roots of the Senate aristocrats.
It meant declaring war on the entire Roman elite class!
There was no turning back…
Tiberius had once anxiously asked Night if he wasn’t afraid of being hated, of being remembered with scorn after it was all over.
But the man had said that even if he were to die midway through the reforms, he wouldn’t regret it…
But Tiberius had a worry deep inside.
He feared that even if the truth were revealed, people might still choose to remain passive, not supporting him…
He feared that no one would stand up and shout for him.
He worried that the common people might not realize the severity and danger of the problem.
If they couldn’t awaken their own minds and think critically about what was at stake…
They would forever live in the dreamlike prison spun by the aristocrats and landowners.
The most terrifying thing in this world is living in hell without realizing it.
Yet, strangely, it is also fortunate, for ignorance brings fearlessness.
And when you fear nothing, you can live your life undisturbed.
But that doesn’t mean disaster won’t draw near.
Eventually, people must stand up and save themselves!
Just as Night once led them across the Ebro River, now it was time to awaken the breath of freedom in people’s souls.
In this moment, Night had taught Tiberius a vital truth.
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