Chapter 135: Thuriis diplomatic affair
So Davos took out a parchment from his arms and sneered, “The Thurians are so forgetful! Fortunately, I still have one here!” Then he handed the parchment over to the statesmen then passed it on to each other. Sure enough, the promise to give freedom to slaves were written in it, and the signature of Burkes as a witness and also the signatures of the two strategoi, Kunogelata and Nianses.
At that time, in order to keep the mercenaries from leaving the Sybaris plain and for them to stick on their camp, the strategoi of Thurii had agreed to whatever conditions they propose. According to their experience, it is very difficult for the mercenaries to hold out for a long time, so if they can kill more Lucanians, then it is fine if they consume more. And these more than 2,000 slaves were regarded as throwing a meat-stuffed bun at a dog*. Unexpectedly, the mercenaries dared to take the initiative to attack the enemy and won. (T/N: Chinese idiom means something like they won’t feel any pain by throwing them away.)
And now, Nianses, known for being frugal, is in power. So he of course, will not be willing to turn these more than a thousand slaves into freeman. But the most important point is that if these slaves were converted into freeman, then what about the other mining slaves? They will certainly have some thoughts, and they should not forget that there are still 8,000~9,000 mining slaves. Once there is a disturbance, it will be very difficult to control them with the current number of citizens in Thurii. Not to mention that there are still a group of freeman on the port that are still making trouble over the issue of their citizenship with Thurii.
And when the paper was passed to Plesinas, he didn’t even look at it, he hardened himself and tore it into pieces with his hands, “This is fake! This is fake!”
This scoundrel’s insolent behavior immediately angered all the people that are present. Scambras, who was hot tempered, rushed forward first, grabbed Plesinas and directly punched him, while swearing, “Who told you to tear it! Who told you to tear it! Treacherous Thurii! You Thurians should go to hell!”
A punch, and another punch…if it was not for someone else pulling Scambras away in time, then Plesinas would have been beaten until he lost consciousness. At this moment, Plesinas cried out in fear, “Murder! Murder! Is Amendolara planning to go to war with Thurii?!!”
“Drive him out of Amendolara! Don’t forget to give him all the drachmas to pay for the payment of all the mining slaves that have fled to Amendolara, lest Thurii would say that we have stolen their property.” Said Davos in disgust.
“Yes!” Grimaced Mersis and replied, “Uhm, we might not have enough money.”
Davos thought for a while and said, “Then write a ‘we owe you’ in the name of the council of Amendolara, and to pay them once we have the money.”
“But in this way, I am afraid that all the other slaves who had participated in the war will run to Amendolara!” Reminded Cornelius.
“Then let them come. They have helped us win the war with the Lucanians, and they have paid it with their blood and lives. The impartial Hades is looking at us above, and he hope that we can fulfill our oath to him.” Said Davos with a solemn expression.
“This is a bargain for the Thurians!” Said Mersis with resentment.
“The punishment of the gods will always come if you break the oath that you have pledged to the gods.” Said Davos, then he turned back to Aristocrates, who was still shocked by what happened just now, and said, “Now that you are free, you can go wherever you want to go.”
Aristocrates did not expect that the result they wanted would come so soon, and his whole body trembled with excitement, “Thank you, Milord! We are…willing to stay in Amendolara…and…I am personally willing to repay Amendolara for the money that you had paid for our freedom!”
Davos looked at him, seeing him speak with sincerity, he nodded approvingly, “Alright!”
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
When Plesinas returned to Thurii, he naturally publicized the “evil deeds” of Amendolara to arouse the public’s anger.
Of course, Amendolara also had measures to deal with it. Through the mouth of the patients who had come to see the physicians in Amendolara, they spread what happened in the council that day among the people of Thurii.
For some time, the people of Thurii couldn’t tell which version of the story were true.
However, the city hall of Thurii had quickly acted. They strongly demanded Amendolara to return the slaves that have fled, or else Amendolara will break the agreement, and Thurii would never sit idly by.
The statesmen of Amendolara refused and reminded Thurii that they should keep their promise that they had made and give their benefactor (the slaves that have participated in the war) their freedom.
Thurii then announced that the people of the city were forbidden to go to Amendolara. And foreign merchants who went to Amendolara were taxed heavily when they came to trade in Thurii.
Since the warehouses and inns of Amendolara is still not been completely finished, so there are only few merchants going to Amendolara, but there are a lot of patients from other city-states that comes, which has little impact on the negligible trade of Amendolara. However, Amendolara still took action, and they arranged the military training of the citizen soldiers on the Saraceno river, which made the Thurians and the slaves who were farming in the Sybaris plain to be nervous.
No further action was taken by the city hall of Thurii apart from protesting to Amendolara, and the two sides suddenly remained silent.
For Davos, he didn’t want to have a bad relationship with Thurii, but when things got to this point, he had to make a choice, choosing Thurii is beneficial to his plan of attacking the Lucania in the future, but he has to destroy his previous promise. While choosing to liberate the slaves will fulfill his promise, but it could endanger the alliance with Thurii. Davos thought that destroying the alliance with Thurii could be made up in the future, but once his promise was destroyed, then it will leave a bad impression on Magna Graecia which is hard to eliminate, even if the promise was only aimed at the slaves. Adhering to his promise is not only related to his integrity, but also to the integrity of Amendolara. Because many of the new laws enacted by Amendolara depends on the trust of the people and foreigners, they should be convinced that under any circumstances, Amendolara will keep her promise. This is the foundation of his country!
And just when the relationship between Amendolara and Thurii was in a deadlock, a guest came to the city of Thurii, it is the envoy of Crotone..
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
At the end of june, the statesmen of Amendolara held a meeting to discuss holding a trial to select athletes to participate in the Isthmian Games held in the summer following the Olympic games. This is one of the four world-famous competition in Panhellenic Greece. Although It is not as old as the Olympic games, it is also a famous event. Davos and the statesmen hope that the athletes can show to the Greek cities the bearing of the new Amendolara.
Davos even considered going to Corinth with the selected athletes (because Corinth is the location of the Isthmian games). In his previous life, he had no money nor time to go to the Olympic games, but in this era, he could enjoy the most original classical games as a VIP.
Just when the statesmen were happily discussing how to hold the trial, a surprising information came: Something big happened in the city of Thurii!
It turned out that an envoy of Crotone came to Thurii to condemn them of their crime. He claimed that a town had been built on the old location of Sybaris by Thurii, which violated the agreement they signed with Crotone.
Nianses and the other strategoi quickly explained that because of the large-scale attack of the Lucanians, Thurii had no choice but to let the mercenaries build a camp there temporarily, which was vacated quickly afterwards…
However, the envoy of Crotone refused to accept their reason and insisted that Thurii had violated their agreement. If they do not want to cause serious consequences to the relations between the two cities, a compensation must be paid for such acts. In fact, the real reason for the envoy’s questioning Thurii is that, after the war between Crotone and Brutti ended, they have consumed a lot of money and supplies from their treasury, and some people in the city council have put forward such a proposal. In addition, the strength of Thurii was greatly weakened at this time. Therefore, the Crotonians had thought that Thurii would not risk offending the strong city-state Crotone and reject their claim, at most there will be a dispute in the amount of compensation, but they can bargain. So the envoy of Crotone issued a huge list of compensation.
When the strategoi of Thurii saw the list, they immediately understood that Crotone was here not to condemn them, but to blackmail them!
All of a sudden, the strategoi clamored, specially Nianses who had become the polemarchos. Although he look at the problem more comprehensively, but his frugal nature has not changed, you can see it just from him not hesitating to have a stalemate with Amendolara, and not wanting to turn the thousand of slaves into freeman. Naturally, he would not accept the blackmail of Crotone. So he said to the envoy, “The council of Thurii needs to discuss the matter collectively before we can give Crotone our answer.”
After the envoy left, he immediately asked Plesinas to secretly inform the public of this matter and incite them to protest in the place where the envoy is staying. The purpose of Nianses is to: First, the envoy can see the anger and determination of the people of Thurii and create favourable conditions for the next negotiation. Second, even if a compensation agreement is signed in the future, this will reduce the criticism of the masses to the city hall.
However, it never occurred to him that the people of Thurii had become more crazy and irrational after the last incident where they have expelled Kunogelata. Moreover, they were guided by some people with intentions, who were not under the control of Plesinas.
They are the descendants of the Sybarites. A hundred years ago, Crotone defeated and destroyed the city of Sybaris. The people who have lost their homes have then rebuilt the city and soon made it prosperous again. After Crotone found out about it, they then sent troops again to capture the city and to completely destroy it. Finally, Pericles of Athens responded to their request and called on all the Greeks to rebuild Sybaris. So the elites of Athens and immigrants from all over Greece flocked to build Thurii on the plains of Sybaris. But soon after, the Sybarites clashed with Athens and the other immigrants, because the Sybarites wanted to make Thurii into a Sybaris Thurii, which of course was not acceptable by the other immigrants. As a result, there was a bloody conflict and the Sybarites were expelled. However, the Sybarites, were after all, the local snakes, so a small number of them manage to remain in secret. In these people’s minds, Crotone is their lifetime enemy that have destroyed their homes and reduced them to such a situation, and so they have passed this hatred to their descendants, and now that an opportunity have come, how could the descendants of Sybaris let go of it.
Thousands of crazy people could not be stopped by just a few soldiers. They rushed into the place where the envoy was staying and beat the envoy of Crotone. When Nianses heard about it and arrived with a large contingent of guards, the envoy was already dead.