The years passed and the first settlers grew old and died. Some villagers were forced and some chose to join them, while craftsmen, labourers, merchants and slaves all came to the city, and lived within its strong stone walls. They mingled together and some worked hard and some did not, and some had skill and some did not. For a while more caravans came, while the armies stayed away, for Nicopolis was neither as wealthy nor as desirable as an outpost to make them scorn the strength of its walls. Though the Disorderlies were gone, their descendants and the other inhabitants kept both their suspicion of Great Kings and their desire to be left alone.

Kings and kingdoms rose and fell and life went on. Caravan routes to the south became safer and some said faster, and the few who still came this way were the stubborn or those who valued the beautiful inscribed gemstones crafted by the Nicopolitans or the fine silk they took and reworked into flimsy gauze. The city was not wealthy and built fewer temples or monuments and did not add to its walls. Yet it was not poor, and like the shepherds and the farmers, the craftsmen endured and had enough and sometimes more than enough.

When the sons of Greece dwindled and the lines of their kings failed, others appeared. The proud Arsacids rode their fine horses out from the east and later the barbarian Romans and their Caesars came from the west. Kings appeared in Edessa and claimed the lands all around as far as Nicopolis and the great Euphrates beyond, calling their kingdom Osrhoene. There will always be kings and their satraps and their soldiers and there will always be tribute. The Nicopolitans paid the tribute, but would not take any of the kings’ soldiers into their city and said that they would defend their own walls, and the first king was wise enough to see that the old stone walls were still strong and agreed. Not all his heirs were so wise, but willingly or not they kept the promise to let Nicopolis govern itself and defend itself as long as the city paid tribute. When they spoke of this sometimes the traders laughed, because the same agreement was made by these kings with the great Arsacid king of kings in Parthia.

For four hundred years and more Nicopolis stood on its hill, its stone walls weathered and cracked like an old warrior who still kept some of the vigour of his youth. The citizens were of many races and spoke many tongues, though all were governed by a council and magistrates who wrote laws in the language of the Greeks. Outside the walls, the shepherds and the farmers spoke as their fathers and their fathers’ fathers had done back to the very beginning. Just as it had always been, they tended their flocks and tilled the hard earth, cherishing every drop of rain.