Crusader Kings: Prisoners of War.

Chapter 321 Save the child
Ivar's success had far-reaching consequences, but was temporarily suppressed by Orville, who asked to rest for a while before making a second voyage. This time he would bring a small transport fleet back with more spices.

Frankly speaking, this is a very dangerous activity. You never know when you might encounter a ruthless storm or difficult-to-deal-with pirates. Even someone as strong as Ivar's father Ragnar would have his ship capsized in the North Sea, which he is most familiar with, and end up being buried in the sea without a complete body.

Not to mention that Ivar is now exploring a sea area that he is completely unfamiliar with. One wrong step could lead to big problems. It can be said that he is dancing on a tightrope. Therefore, Orville did not blame him too much and gave him enough time to repair and replenish the lost crew members.

He behaved very generously at this time. After receiving a huge sum of money from Orville's financial officer, he distributed most of it to his men, keeping only a small part for himself, and even distributed some as pensions to the relatives and friends of the dead sailors. In the end, the gold and silver in his hands was not much more than that of ordinary sailors.

Orville was already arranging sailors and ships for him, because the matter was very important. He had plans for India, because India at this time did have its merits - this place was not only rich in resources, but also had well-developed medicine, mathematics, astronomy, agriculture, and medicine in particular, which was completely ahead of the Romans of this era. Orville had to find a way to deal with the plague that might occur in the future. It was not realistic to find someone from the East thousands of miles away, but it was not impossible to find an Indian, so he could try his best.

At the same time, once direct trade with India becomes frequent, the Arabs on the Arabian Peninsula who rely on the sea for their livelihood cannot help but be vigilant. They are likely to mobilize to stop the Romans from exploring and expanding into the Indian Ocean, because this would be stealing business and cutting off their financial resources.

For this purpose, we must prepare a navy anyway.

For a country of Egypt's size, shipbuilding is not a difficult task. Give it a few years and it will be able to build a batch of warships. And since it still has advantages in size and construction technology over the Arabs, it is a good idea to suppress the opponent in the number of warships.

The problem now is where to get so many sailors. Most of Orville's soldiers are recruited from Rome. Among them, there are not many who can drive warships and know how to sail, otherwise they would not have to rely on Viking pirates to do things.

Then there was actually only one choice before Orville - to use local people, more specifically, the local Greeks.

The Egyptians could do just fine, even though they were better at inland navigation and their navy had been monopolized by the Greeks for hundreds of years, resulting in the decline of martial ethics and the inability to fight. But Orville felt that they could be saved with intensive training and guidance. After all, they could swim, just not very proficiently.

Using only Greeks was more of a need for power balance. Although he wanted to suppress the status of the Greeks and balance the power between the Greeks and the native Egyptians, he did not want to let the Greeks completely lose their advantage for the time being. This would cause the Egyptians to point the finger at the Romans when problems arose. The two sides maintained a state of parity, and a little bit of open and secret fighting was beneficial to the Romans at this stage.

Giving the Greeks a certain monopoly over the navy is good, they will have more say, and they can take the opportunity to make some money to maintain a certain economic advantage, so that the political balance will not be completely unbalanced and shattered. Not to mention that the Greeks are indeed better sailors than the Egyptians. Judging from the standard of selecting the best from the best, Orville did a perfect job.

After all, Greek colonies were indeed spread all over the Mediterranean world, and the Persian Empire and later the Romans also liked to hire Greek sailors to fight. All signs indicate that the Greeks were indeed a seafaring nation and their naval warfare capabilities have always been good.
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Just as he was busy preparing the navy, the newly appointed secretary Agricola came to his office and handed him a letter from Rome.

Seeing the sender's name, Orville raised his eyebrows, a little surprised. Generally speaking, some business partners would ask about his well-being, but there were only a few people in Rome who would send him letters:

Nicanor, who runs the head office there, reports the situation to him on time every week and every month.

Emperor Vespa would occasionally write to him to talk about central political matters, ask about Egypt and provide him with some experience and advice from the older generation.

Tia would write him letters regularly, and the contents were more varied, sometimes expressing thoughts and greetings, and sometimes discussing government affairs. The ratio was 1:1 before, but has gradually reached 3:2, and is tending to move closer to 2:1.

The person writing to Orville now was not any of these people, but Ovid, with whom he had not been in touch for some time.

When he was in Rome some time ago, he helped the other party publish the "Love Sutra". Because the grand prize was selected by public voting, and Ovid's popularity and writing style were indeed very good, he won the final prize, and Orville gave him a bounty.

The two sides have always maintained a good relationship, but there is not much actual contact, mainly because Orville really has nothing in common with this romantic and great writer. Presumably, the other party is similar. He is very self-aware and is obsessed with literature and art and would not interfere in politics.

So unless it was something really big, Ovid would definitely not write to me. Now the matter in the letter was a big deal, so big that Ovid was almost dead.

The story should start with Greece itself. Modern people say that Greece believes in Greek polytheism, mainly the Olympian gods. In fact, it took a process for this set of beliefs to spread. For example, the previous twelve Titans obviously had more matriarchal mythology, and the status of female gods was likely to be higher than that of male gods.

Apart from the first generation of Titans, the beliefs of the various city-states were not actually unified into a system. It took a long time for each family to worship their own local gods and for each family to unify and respect the great god Zeus as the king of gods. It is conceivable that this was a bloody process. The formation of cultural identity is not a simple thing, and it is difficult to change once it is formed.

After this set of Olympus beliefs was formed, it was basically finalized within a period of time. As for the religious beliefs of the Greeks of this era or the Romans who were deeply influenced by Greek culture, we can probably find out more about them from the "Theogony" by the ancient Greek poet Hesiod.

(End of this chapter)