Free The Amber Road by Harry Sidebottom

duty. ‘Yet in all conscience, I cannot. I have the honour to be charged with a mission by the most noble Augustus himself. To delay would amount to disobeying imperial mandata .’
    There were loud mutterings about the triviality of his task. Some, perfectly audible, questioned what type of emperor concerned himself with amber ornaments over the wellbeing of his subjects. One called out Gallienus’s infamous line on being informed of the revolt of Postumus in Gaul: Can the Res Publica be safe without Atrebatic cloaks?
    ‘It must be remembered, failure to carry out imperial orders is nothing less than maiestas .’
    At the Latin word for treason, the Boule became very quiet.
    ‘As I understand, the city of Olbia falls under the military competence of the governor of Moesia Inferior, and you should apply to him.’ Zeno resumed his seat. Whenever possible, pass responsibility. All he had said was true, as far as it went, and this backwater meant nothing to him.
    The councillors fell to wrangling about what measures, if any, they could take about the slaves.
    Gods below, thought Zeno, it was hard to imagine Olbia was once a powerful city that had defied Alexander the Great, defeated an army of thirty thousand men and killed his governor of Thrace. Now what sort of polis hoped one river patrol boat and forty men would bring them salvation? Was Olbia a Hellenic polis at all?
    To take his mind off his growing need to urinate, Zeno turned over the question in his head. What made a polis ? An urban centre, buildings of course; Olbia had these, if in a much reduced state. Certain institutions were vital: magistrates, council, assembly. The latter had been mentioned. Zeno wondered what it was like, given the Boule seemed just to consist of four or five rich men who dominated the magistracies and some fifteen others who lacked the means or initiative to leave this beleaguered outpost. Then there was culture. Did the Olbians possess paideia ? It was true they worshipped the traditional Greek gods, among them Zeus, Apollo and Demeter. Zeno had witnessed no barbaric religious practices. They spoke Greek, if with bad pronunciation and strange word order. Wearing Sarmatian clothes could be dismissed as a thing of no importance. But blood will out. Some philosophers might argue that a man of any race could become Greek if he adopted Hellenic paideia . Zeno did not agree. These Olbians were descended from waves of nomadic horsemen. Their names gave them away: Padag, Dadag, the names of dogs or slaves. They could never be truly Greek. Zeno himself was born in the heart of the Peloponnese, in Arcadia, under the sheer peak of Cyllene. He would remain a Hellene, even if he lived alone in a hut on the side of a remote mountain, cut off from men and gods, never speaking his native tongue.
    Callistratus brought the debate about the slaves to an end by volunteering to equip and serve on an embassy to the governor of Moesia Inferior. The first archon moved on to raise matters he described of the utmost importance. This spring the king of the Gothic Tervingi had not appeared with his men on the borders to demand his customary gifts. The councillors called out like a disturbed flock of birds. Zeno, his bladder ever more urgent, could not see the cause of their alarm. Surely given the impecunious state of their civic treasury they should welcome the absence of the Goth?
    There was more, Callistratus continued. Word had come downriver that the Castle of Achilles, the most northerly fortified settlement on the right bank of the Hypanis, was deserted; the half-Greek inhabitants had fled. Zeno nearly snorted with derision. Who were these Olbians to judge others half-Greek?
    What was he doing in this barbarous place? How had it come to this? Four years before, he, Aulus Voconius Zeno, Vir Perfectissimus , had been governor of Cilicia. In the revolt of Macrianus and Quietus, he had remained loyal. Although unable to defend his province, his fides – and