Life In Bactra

Despite the approach of invaders:

"...everyday life went on."
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), 209 B.C., p. 23 -

wagons;
beasts of burden;
porters;
jugs or baskets on women's heads;
artisans;
laborers;
slaves;
a rich man in a litter;
a mounted officer;
a war elephant with its mahout;
sounds of flute and drum;
odors of sweat, dung, smoke, cooking and incense.

Along the Sacred Way, there are:

a library;
an odeon;
a marble gymnasium with pillars and friezes;
herms.

Elsewhere, there are:

buildings, either blank or vividly painted;
schools;
public baths;
a stadium;
a hippodrome;
a palace;
sidewalks and stepping stones above the manure and garbage;
a temple;
a marketplace where booths sell -

silk;
linens;
woolens;
wine;
spices;
sweetmeats;
drugs;
gems;
brasswork;
silverwork;
goldwork;
ironwork;
talismans -

and there are:

shouting sellers;
haggling shoppers;
dancers;
musicians;
soothsayers;
wizards;
prostitutes;
beggars;
idlers;
faces and garments from China, India, Persia, Arabia, Syria, Anatolia, Europe, the highlands and the plains.

We are immersed in the past. However, it is not strange to an experienced time traveler:

"To Everard the scene was eerily half-familiar. He had witnessed its like in a score of different lands, in as many different centuries. Each was unique, but a prehistorically ancient kinship vibrated in them all."
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), 209 B.C., p. 24.

In this same novel, Guion says that:

countless world lines are intermeshed throughout the continuum like a spiderweb;

"'A touch on one strand trembles through many.'" (31,275,389 B.C., p. 135);

sometimes the Patrol does not know the source of a disturbance in the web because "'...that source perhaps does not exist in our yet, our reality.'" (ibid.);

the Patrol can only try to trace the disturbance back up the threads...

They might trace the disturbance to:

the arrival of a temporal vehicle that did not/will not depart from any earlier or subsequent time in this reality;

a quantum event that has diverted history from the course guarded by the Patrol.

Anderson uniquely combines such metaphysical speculations with the sights, sounds, smells and solidities of many past periods.