Rome Must Perish

"At sea, the Pompeians are indeed less vigilant than on land because you don’t have a fleet or control of the port, so they don’t think you can threaten their safety from the sea. In fact, these coastal towns in Campania haven’t faced an attack from the sea for one or two hundred years, and their harbor defenses are extremely weak.

Take Pompeii, for example. Its port area has five harbors; the two built early on even have water gates. Later, due to the prosperous sea trade, the original harbors were insufficient, so two more were built, but those were constructed for the sake of convenience, without water gates or iron chains for interception, and not even a patrol ship around the harbor. The only warning system relies on the lighthouse keeper, but if ships are disguised in advance, he might not immediately notice anything unusual."

"And what about the other port?" the attentive Maximus asked.

"That’s the private port of the Vidius family, allowing only their merchant ships and those with trade relations to enter," Quintus said coldly. "This private harbor is equipped with a long breakwater and water gate, with watchtowers on top, making its defenses quite complete. But, unfortunately, protecting just this one harbor is of no real use..."

As soon as the old man mentioned the Vidius family of Pompeii, a rancor seemed to emanate from him, and Maximus quickly shifted the topic: "We’ve solved the issue of entering the port, but there’s another problem—we don’t have any ships."

Quintus looked at him with a peculiar expression, as if to say: Young man, are you joking?

The middle-aged man Oluus chimed in: "I heard that a large number of sailors and dock laborers joined your ranks, leading to the near-abandonment of those ports outside Napolet City. Some sailors, when fleeing the port, directly stole port ships and rowed them to the beach near this camp, where the ships got stranded. Later, you set up another camp close to the coast, and the Napoletans didn’t dare to reclaim those stranded ships..."

With this reminder, Maximus suddenly remembered: The camp near the coast belonged to Attutmus’s Fifth Battalion, who once mentioned wanting to send soldiers out to sea to fish and help the rebel army increase their meat reserves... But this proposal went nowhere, and he didn’t inquire further, but this at least indicated that the Attutmus camp had ships.

Maximus stroked his chin, pondered for a moment, and then smiled, saying: "You are truly impressive! Upon realizing the limited number of my troops, you devised such a detailed raid plan so quickly, which I greatly admire!"