"Lucius Julius Caesar, you say?"
The man staggered up from the table and stumbled over to me.
He completely reeked of cheap wine.
I glanced at the empty amphorae cluttering his table.
Looked like he spent the whole night drinking.
In this era of Rome, drinking until you were dead drunk was generally frowned upon.
It was viewed as a shameful lack of self-control.
Besides, the Romans usually watered down their wine significantly, making it difficult to get drunk in the first place unless you deliberately set out to.
"It seems my distant relative has come to see me. If someone asked me to name the most famous man in Rome right now, it would undoubtedly be you," Antony said, flashing a rakish grin.
Marcus Antonius, or Mark Antony.
It was a name remembered for centuries.
Julius Caesar's fiercely loyal and brilliant commander, and the one who ultimately formed the Second Triumvirate alongside Octavian and Lepidus.
But after suffering a crushing defeat at the Battle of Actium against Octavian, he took his own life.
"I don't recall ever seeing you at the brothels, though."
"I don't go there often," I replied with a casual shrug.
"So, why have the two most famous men in Rome come looking for me in this dingy tavern?"
While Pompey let out a loud, disgusted sigh beside me, I reached out and placed a hand on Antony's arm.
"I've come to make you an offer."
***
If you needed to traverse the major cities of Italy at astonishing speed, what was the most essential thing?
No matter how impeccably paved the Roman roads were, traveling on foot alone would undeniably take several months.
What I needed was horses.
And more importantly, we needed men who had mastered them.
I needed a good cavalry commander.
Mark Antony.
Right now, there was probably no one in Rome with more natural talent for cavalry command.
He was still in his twenties, but Antony possessed the talents required to become an exceptional commander.
Even if his political judgment was another matter.
"So you're asking me to join your little tour to inspect the allied cities, Caesar?" Antony asked, adjusting his rumpled tunic as we walked.
Antony, Pompey, and I were heading toward the Campus Martius.
"That's right."
"You're just a member of the vigintisexviri. It's a minor magistracy, and from what I hear, the imperium the Senate just granted you is barely larger than a rat's tail."
He was surprisingly well-informed.
I guess he wasn't completely oblivious to the political winds after all.
Antony stretched his arms and continued.
"Furthermore, I'm just a jobless vagrant with no military experience. Why in the world do you need my help?"
"He has a point," Pompey muttered, leaning in close to me.
"I already assigned Aquilius, one of my most trusted officers, to command your escort. Dragging a reckless drunkard like this along will only increase the danger."
Instead of answering, I simply offered a faint smile.
The moment I accepted the Senate's proposal, Pompey had immediately stepped up to support me.
He had personally assigned Aquilius—the same man who had helped me push the trademark law through—to serve as the commander of my escort.
On top of that, Pompey promised to send letters of introduction to all the allied cities he had personal ties with.
"But I believe Antony possesses tremendous potential," I said firmly.
"..."
I stared at Antony.
Over the past few years, I had been quietly gathering notes on various key figures in Rome.
Naturally, that included men like Octavian and Antony, the men who would one day shake the Republic to its core.
Even if I knew their lives intimately from the history books, there was absolutely no guarantee they would match their historical records.
The truth often diverged wildly from the tidied-up histories.
And Mark Antony was a perfect example of that.
"He's an infamous womanizer and drinks like a fish. At the same time, he runs around the streets with a pack of thugs, demonstrating a surprisingly brutal talent for street politics."
"Exactly. A degenerate like that will be of absolutely no use to you," Pompey scoffed.
I slowly stepped closer to Antony.
"But he is also a man who still trains his body every day at the Campus Martius. And rumor has it, his horsemanship is utterly unmatched."
"Have you been secretly spying on me, Caesar? I know I'm incredibly popular, but I didn't think I had fellow citizens stalking me in the shadows."
"Many rumors drift through the streets of Rome," I replied with a chuckle.
As always, the Campus Martius was bustling with citizens practicing their swordsmanship and riding skills.
"I brought you both here today to show you something."
With that, I gestured toward Felix.
A moment later, Felix approached, leading several horses by their reins.
"Did you just want to go for a ride?" Antony asked, looking confused.
Meanwhile, Pompey had already approached one of the horses and was squinting at the saddle.
"What exactly is this?"
As expected, Pompey's military instincts caught on instantly.
I walked over and stood beside the horse.
Something unfamiliar hung beneath the saddle—a tool that had never been seen in Rome before.
It was a small, iron loop designed to support a rider's foot.
With Pompey and Antony watching me intently, I placed my foot into the stirrup and effortlessly hoisted myself into the saddle.
"Let's just call it the future of the Roman cavalry."
***
The Romans of this era used a distinctive type of saddle.
The four-horned saddle.
It was a great improvement over the primitive saddles used by the Greeks, and it was perfectly serviceable for light cavalry.
However, it lacked one crucial invention: the stirrup.
Stirrups allowed a rider to keep their balance while mounted. Without them, a rider had to grip the horse's flanks with their bare thighs to avoid falling off.
Consequently, wielding two-handed weapons during combat on horses was quite difficult.
The stirrup was one of the most important inventions in military history which solved that problem.
It eventually paved the way for the rise of heavily armored shock cavalry and directly contributed to the development of feudalism in the Middle Ages.
"This is a genuinely fascinating contraption. You slide your feet into these loops?" Pompey asked, thoroughly inspecting the stirrups.
"It looks like it would make wielding a weapon much easier in battle."
"Yes. It also makes mounting the horse far easier. And when you charge with a spear, it absorbs the shock, preventing you from being thrown backward out of the saddle."
Once I had shown enough, I swung my leg over and dismounted.
Antony still looked unimpressed, but Pompey's eyes were practically fixed on the stirrups, refusing to look away.
"Forging the stirrups themselves was easy. But safely attaching them to the horse was a completely different story."
First, I had to redesign the saddle from the beginning.
If you simply strapped stirrups to a traditional saddle without the proper wooden frame, the concentrated weight of the rider would place painful strain on the horse's spine.
We had to design a rigid saddle tree that evenly distributed the weight, and we had to fit each saddle to the horse's body.
There was a very good reason medieval knights spent vast fortunes on their horses and riding gear.
"But if our cavalrymen begin utilizing these stirrups, their role on the battlefield will grow immensely. Spear charges will be much more effective, and firing a bow from horseback will be significantly easier."
Currently, the core of the Roman military machine was its heavy infantry.
The cavalry was usually comprised of auxiliary units drawn from allied cities or foreign tribes.
"I must try this for myself," Pompey said eagerly.
"Of course. Allow me to assist you."
I helped Pompey step into the stirrup and hoist himself up.
Once mounted, he spurred the horse forward, galloping around the open field of the Campus Martius multiple times.
"It is undeniably far more comfortable. With just a little bit of practice, I could easily maintain perfect balance without even holding the reins."
"Would you care to try it as well, Antony?" I asked, turning to him.
"Well, I suppose I have no reason to refuse," Antony replied with a still unimpressed expression.
Looking disinterested, he jammed his foot into the stirrup and hauled himself up.
But over the next twenty minutes, his booming voice rang out across the Campus Martius.
"By the gods, Lucius Julius Caesar! This is absolutely incredible!"
Drenched in sweat, Antony practically vaulted off the horse.
He was so full of energy he looked ready to burst.
"I thought it was just a trivial toy, but actually riding with it is incredible! It feels exactly like the first time I held a woman in my arms!"
"That is a strange comparison, but it is undeniably comfortable, isn't it?" I replied with a laugh.
"Utilizing these, we'll be able to traverse the roads faster and with much less exhaustion."
"I honestly just thought you were a strange, eccentric fellow, Lucius Caesar," Antony said, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his tunic.
"The Palmolive, the trademark laws, the watermills... sure, you invented some clever little toys."
Calling them 'clever little toys' felt like a massive understatement, but I suppose a guy like Antony wouldn't find industrial manufacturing particularly exciting.
"But this is undeniably magnificent. You could build entirely new cavalry tactics around this one invention," Antony said, his eyes fixed on mine.
"Alright. I've decided to join your little tour, Caesar. Taking orders from a relative who is younger than me genuinely irritates me, but this looks like it's going to be too tempting to refuse."
"I am very glad to hear that," I replied.
This journey would be the perfect opportunity to see what kind of man Mark Antony truly was.
Would he be a useful ally?
Or a threat?
I could decide what to do with him after the expedition was over.
The next moment, Antony stared at me with an grave expression.
"I do have one crucial question to ask you, however..."
"Please, ask whatever you wish."
What was he going to say?
This was the most serious look I had seen on his face since the moment I met him.
Antony slowly opened his mouth.
"Could you perhaps lend me some money? I have quite a few tabs at the local taverns, and the owners will not let me leave the city until I settle them."
While Pompey let out a long sigh next to me, I couldn't hold back a burst of laughter.
"Sure, as much as you need."
***
"I think we need to raise the rear cantle of the saddle slightly more. It would make it much easier to absorb the shock of a charge."
"Why don't we try adjusting the internal padding to better conform to the specific build of the horse?"
A heated debate raged among the students and instructors of the technical school.
Immediately following the public announcement of his expedition to inspect the Italian roads, Lucius Caesar had issued them a new order.
It was the large-scale production of new cavalry equipment.
The complete redesign of the traditional Roman saddle, alongside the integration of the bizarre new tool known as the 'stirrup.'
Based on the sketches Lucius had provided, the instructors and students carefully studied how it worked, coming up with the methods of construction and improvements to its design.
And that wasn't all.
"You want us to nail pieces of metal onto a horse's hooves? What exactly do you mean by that?"
"When a horse gallops on paved roads for extended periods, their hooves easily crack or splinter, do they not? Sir Caesar claimed that attaching these would greatly reduce the damage."
"But will merely attaching a piece of metal onto the hoof actually solve the problem?"
The engineers were skeptical, but they obediently began forging crescent-shaped iron plates for the horses' hooves.
However, they weren't just mindlessly following orders anymore.
Ever since the young Caesar had introduced patents, countless engineers voluntarily stayed at the school late into the night, drafting new designs and theoretical upgrades.
After witnessing Spurius—the man who designed the streetlights—become rich beyond imagining almost overnight, hundreds of men submitted proposals for new mechanisms and tools.
Only a tiny fraction of those proposals were chosen for actual production, but the few who succeeded were rewarded with sums they had never dared dream of."
"Instead of forging iron shoes that need to be nailed directly into the hoof right now, why don't we try designing something more like a sandal?"
"A sandal?"
"Yes! We forge an iron shoe that securely straps or laces around the horse's hoof. It would be much faster to make. We don't have much time before Caesar leaves Rome."
As the volume of experiments and design work exploded, the original technical school building could no longer contain them all.
"We need a separate place for late-night experiments!"
"Shouldn't we just lease a separate building of our own?"
Bombarded by the relentless demands of the students and instructors, Vitruvius eventually relented and leased several new insulae.
These buildings were strictly dedicated to experiments and invention rather than education, and the lights inside them burned brightly deep into the night.
"What if we try forging the alloy using this material instead?"
"Let's head to the forge tomorrow and test that exact method."
"Honestly, we should just build our own forge. I'll submit a formal request to Vitruvius."
And just like that, Rome's first true inventors were slowly stepping out into the light.