Chersonesus Taurica, Regnum Bosphorus, January 173
A man lay dying in his bed. Herodes Atticus, formerly the richest man of the Roman empire after the Emperor himself, had reached the end of his life. And what a life ! From honors to shame and exile, and then to fame and fortune again, if on a much lesser scale.
During the 13 years of his exile he had transformed the kingdom which has received him in more ways than all the legitimate kings who had ruled upon it in the previous centuries. Bringing new ideas from Rome, he had led to military reforms and to a new kind of security that had allowed for massive transformations in the way the inhabitants of the Regnum Bosphorus lived, exchanged, traded, died. The building of the isthmus wall, the creation of roads with inns at regular distances, similar to the roman postal system, the creation of a core permanent royal army that patrolled the hinterland and protected the wall, the prevention of northern raids, all had contributed to radically transform the region.
Herodes had known the remnants of his fortune would revert in large part to the king’s own treasury after he’d died. While he’d tried to have new heirs with the king’s sister, his wife had proven to be barren. Or maybe it was his seed that had dried after the exile. In any case the father of many had no new heir, and so he’d decided to invest in his new land. Many of the new statio alongside the roads were his, while the king had mainly paid for the roads that improved access to the interior of his kingdom.
Of course most of the trade between the cities still took place by sea, on a fleet also largely owned by Herodes, but the roads had allowed for new farms to be created and wheat production had almost doubled in a decade, increasing the kingdom’s revenues in ways that allowed for the maintenance of the wall and its garrison.
Sociologically too the kingdom had changed. The scythian lords had lost in influence as they could no longer easily call on reinforcements from beyond the wall to force their agenda on the royal army. They had no access to ships and had seen more and more land settled by farmers, losing their usual spaces to the sedentary communities. A number of lords had decided to leave the area completely, going through the walls making dire threats but being out of the kingdom nonetheless, others adapted and became more sedentary, establishing themselves as domain owners and horse sellers.
Overall the Regnum Bosphorus was now stronger than ever before, and had only to increase its richness and keep its vigilance against the North and against its ally and protector but potential destructor, the Empire.
