Ren Hong entered the city through the Moon Gate.On the twentieth day of the siege, when Cleopatra personally entered the city as a "Trojan horse", the queen's faction in the city staged a coup d'état with the dead soldiers of the Han army and opened the city gates.Then there was a day-long street fighting, the Ptolemaic general Achillas and a group of diehards fought to the death, most of the Ptolemaic soldiers surrendered to the queen is the pharaoh of the Ptolemaic family, with whom is not?
If you have to say, the queen ruled more than a year before the king.The experience of entering the port for the Han army was extremely fresh, and it was really a very typical Greek city, unlike the Memphis-heavy Egyptian tradition, where hundreds of years of Greek culture and tradition were condensed in Alexandria.Inside the arched city gate is the wide Arsino Street, and in the center of the street stands a tall stone pillar with a stone statue of the god worshipped by the Greeks, and Chu Shaosun could not tell which one it was.The civilians, Egyptians and Greeks, who were not welcome in the streets, hid in their homes, and watched with fear and suspicion through the cracks in the doors, as the Han army thundered outside the city every day, and finally relied on the "Trojan horse" to open the gates of the city.Riding in a heavily armed chariot and as the victor, General Ren Hong looked to the left of the road: in the bustling port area, the markets are lined with markets, and a causeway connects the city to the island of Pharos, where the majestic lighthouse stands.When the Han army broke the city, Ptolemy XIII, escorted by eunuchs and Roman mercenaries, fled to the island of Pharos and hid in a fortress under a lighthouse.Ren Hong looked to the right side of the chariot again, along the canal was the Egyptian quarter where the low houses were stacked in the first phase, and there were even flames that had not yet been extinguished, and further east was the tall Pan Shen Mountain, on which the temple of Serapis stood on the top of the mountain, and the majestic stone pillars were like the thick legs of giants."
Standing at the temple, you can overlook the whole city."
The queen was in the same car with Ren Hong, wearing a red and white crown and holding a scepter, enjoying the joy of regaining the city and the position of pharaoh, and by the way, she did the work of a little sister as a tour guide for Ren Hong."
The royal district is called Borukon, Alexander's mausoleum, the great library, the theater, etc., are all nearby, and the royal palace is also in the garden."
She said that Ren Hong's accommodation tonight will be arranged in the palace, Ren Hong is stunned, sleeping in the palace, Ren Taishi sleeps in the dragon bed at night?
If Egypt has one.A few miles further east, a few miles outside the city, was Canopus, the pastime of the Ptolemaic royal family, where there was a vehicular track, but now it was also smoking, and the iron hooves of the monster of war would always scar Ming.The queen said that when the war was over, she hoped to experience the drama and excitement of the Greeks with the general."
What other entertainment and games could be more exciting than war?"
Ren Hong obviously did not forget the purpose of his visit to Egypt, and after arranging for the Han army to control the city defense with the queen's cronies, he hurriedly took Liu Gengsheng and others to the big library.The building located next to the Temple of the Muses is the library, a total of two floors high, covering a wide area, with a reddish-brown roof, and a relief of a pair of cobras at the top of the main entrance.It is also carved vividly, making it difficult for passers-by not to pay attention to the pair of jade rabbits.He also looked at it several times, and then shook his head: "He actually set up a naked statue in the place where the books are hidden, bare-chested and exposed, how to let the scholars concentrate on learning, this is the custom of the Greeks." ”But after entering the library, Chu Shaosun also had to admit that the Greeks' desire to collect books from all over the world was indeed serious.On the wooden shelves in the library, there are rolls of papyrus, which are pressed and dried with sedge and dried to make writing material a bit similar to the paper of the Han Dynasty, which is very convenient for writing.Each region is divided into categories, mathematics, astrogeography, poetry, epic, drama, medicine, philosophy, rhetoric, etc., all of which are managed by scholars.The only thing that Chu Shaosun cares about is that there are still statues in the library!
His eyes began to drift again.Can it be replaced by a naked man?
Ren Hong and his disciple Liu Gengsheng wandered in this sea of papyrus, and he smiled and said to his disciple: "What, now seeing is believing?"
”Liu Gengsheng was convinced: "This place is indeed the Shiqu Pavilion in Haixi. ”It is still bigger and older than Shiqu Pavilion, after all, since Ptolemy I, he has continuously collected books for more than two hundred years, and has collected almost all the wisdom of the Mediterranean world.Famous scholars such as Euclid and Archimedes also traveled here to give lectures, heliocentrism sprouted here, and even measured the circumference of the earth.It's just that the purpose of the place where the Great Book was built: to achieve a great collection of world knowledge, I am afraid that Ren Hong will have to help the dead Aristotle and Ptolemy I to achieve it.Ren Hong looked at some papyrus, and his eyes flashed with a strange light.The hundreds of thousands of books in this library, along with the Greek scholars in the library, were all transported back to the Han Dynasty by boat, and sent to Shiqu Pavilion to be translated into Chinese, so as to realize the knowledge and wisdom of the East and the West!
Scholars have their own nationality, but when using knowledge, they should not be tied to ethnic groups, as long as it is beneficial to mankind, regardless of the West and the East, it can be inclusive."
This is called, the mastery of the past saint!"
You call it a robbery?
No, no, it's a salvage!
It was at this point in history that the Great Library was destroyed for the first time in the conflict between Caesar and the Egyptians, so it would be better to let the Greek scholars leave the turbulent Mediterranean and go to India or the Han Dynasty, set up quiet desks, and contribute to the cause of translation.The scholars in the library, dressed in Greek robes, were oblivious to General Ren's sinister intentions, including the gray-bearded dramatist Fanos the Younger, who had contributed to the destruction of the city.As soon as the Han army broke the city, a tun of people came to take over the big library, and the scholars were very nervous at first, but later they found that the Han army actually came to guard the big library to guard against fire and robbery, and they were immediately moved.Little Fanos also sighed: "It is rumored that the Seris people are bright, gentle, and fair, and are kind people, low-key and introverted in their way of doing things, and do not want to go to war with their neighbors, but it seems that at least most of them are true." ”Ren Hong is not in a hurry to reveal his purpose, if he wants to move all the hundreds of thousands of books in the library, he has to rely on the help of these Greek scholars, and he has to let them be sold and help count the money.It is also inseparable from the Queen's orders, and if she does not help her win the war completely, this extremely huge project will be difficult to complete.Ren Hong didn't bother to look carefully for the geometric primitives and other books he needed in the big library, and only asked Liu Gengsheng, who had learned Greece, to take care of these collections, and he arrived in the port area to the north, where the war had not yet been completely extinguished.The port was undoubtedly the largest port in the world, transporting goods from Upper and Lower Egypt such as grain, glass, papyrus, olive oil, and gold, cloth, and wine overseas.But now, there was chaos, the merchants abandoned their stalls, and many ships sank in the harbor.The queen also informed the Han army of the enemy's reality: "My foolish brother has not only a few hundred royal guards under his command, but also two thousand Roman mercenaries. ”The Romans had been ordered by Pompey seven years earlier to help the Pipers restore, and the Queen knew them well.After the victory of the piper, in order to support him from being expelled again by his countrymen, and in order to supervise the repayment of Egypt's debts, many officers and veterans of the legion stayed in Alexandria in the form of early retirement, and they married and had children in Egypt.Counting this group of mercenaries, Ptolemy XIII still had 3,000 men in his hands and an intact fleet of three galleys, which cruised between the island of Pharos and the harbor, while the ships controlled by the Han army and the queen were only a dozen or so civilian merchant ships.The West Sea Fleet could not cross the Red Sea, and it was impossible to break through from the sea, and the long and narrow causeway became the only passage."
How's it going?"
Ren Hong frowned and summoned the wet Chen Tang to inquire about the battle situation, he had just launched a tentative attack."
The causeway can be said to be open, I sent the dead to try to break through, but failed."
Ren Hong had already considered pushing the bronze mortar cannon to bombard the damn, but it wasn't just the Roman mercenaries blocking the end of the causeway like turtle shells, but also the fleet guards, throwing stone projectiles with ballistas at anyone who tried to pass through it."
Even if the causeway is breached, the enemy will still be able to cower in the lighthouse."
Ren Hong's gaze never left the wonders of Pharos Island, the Faros Lighthouse is more than 100 meters high, only a little worse than the most spectacular Pyramid of Khufu, the first level of the ground floor is square, and then outside is the fortress with a stone wall, which can accommodate 2,000 people to defend, the ground is dug down for two layers, the bricks are very dense, a cellar of grain, a storage equipment, bread can be eaten for more than a month.The only good news is that "there is no fresh water on the island of Pharos." ”For a time, Pharos and the Great Lighthouse became a tough nut to crack, and as long as Ptolemy XIII was on that day, the situation in Alexandria could change drastically again, and it would take a long time to force the breach and pay a huge number of casualties.Do they still have time?
Ren Hong was already thinking about it, so he gave up the attack, and seized the opportunity to pack up the papyrus books and Greek scholars in the library and transport them away, leaving the mess of Egypt and letting the Cleopatra sisters and the Romans play slowly!
But obviously, God didn't even give him this opportunity.On the third day of the capture of Alexandria, Chen Tang's third tentative attack on Pharos failed again, but the sharp-eyed scouts at the harbor saw a fleet on the northern horizon slowly heading towards the harbor on the last southerly wind of late summer in the Mediterranean Sea in autumn!
Unlike Ptolemy's warships, the sails of those ships were painted with striking red and white stripes!"
It's a Roman ship."
The Greeks in the port rushed to tell each other, feeling bad, that Roman intervention would always be a sword hanging over Egypt's head, but weren't they fighting a civil war?
How can there be enough to send a ship to Egypt?"
Is it the Great Qin Kingdom?"
Chu Shaosun and Liu Gengsheng stood on the tower at the top of the library and looked out into the distance, at least for now, the "Great Qin State" was still the imaginary enemy of the Han army, but the Han people had not directly encountered it."
I can't let my brother get support from the Romans!"
Cleopatra was very anxious, how could she not remember how the Roman army had helped her father restore the country seven years earlier.Can the Seris resist the strength of the Egyptian army?
Only Ren Hong frowned and looked at it for a while, and in the clairvoyant mirror, he saw those scarred Roman warships docked near Pharos Island, and some small boats rowed towards the island.It is true that the Romans came, but the question is "which Roman?"
”Caesar, or Pompey?
And at the wharf of Pharos Island, a middle-aged man with a tired expression and a look that was really similar to General Ren when he was the fattest back then, stepped on this land.Gnaeus Pompey, one of the triumvirate, looked at Ptolemy XIII and Septimius, who came to greet him as their savior, and looked stunned."
Seris?
For ten years, the Romans were obsessed with their silks, and even dreamed of crossing Parthia to communicate directly, on the other side?
”PS: There is only one chapter today.