The year is 37 BC. A young Liburnian Volsus is taken by a Roman unit to help in what at first seems a simple task of collecting taxes, but the encounters with local Illyrian tribes soon lead to unexpected turns of events, as they show more resilience to subjugation than meets the eye. We see their archaic, emotional world of quaint and brutal laws and traditions through the eyes of this youngster, regarded by the Romans as a primitive barbarian, and gradually come to understand that their world is not all that different from our own.