CIneas of Athens is a well-educated, hero-worshipping young man. He lives in a world where Alexander the Great's surviving generals battle for kingdoms of their own within Alexander's conquests. Cineas leaves his stodgy family behind and joins the mercenary army of glamorous Demetrius the Besieger at his fortress of Acrocorinth. "Three months later," Cineas recalls, "I was in Asia?."Following the armies there, he fights as a pikeman at the enormous Battle of Ipsus. From there Cineas travels through Syria to Egypt, where he beds a royal princess and joins up with the exiled King Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus is the monarch of the petty kingdom of Epirus on the Adriatic Sea.Pyrrhus aspires to rule the world, too. But, for a generation, it is Cineas who does his best to make that happen. Through battles and intrigues, cavalry charges, assassinations and liaisons, peaceful philosophy and murderous combat across the Ancient World, Cineas follows Pyrrhus' cause loyally.In the end, King Pyrrhus is overwhelmed in defeat. It is left to his last friend Cineas to conduct his funeral rites. Cineas has now, he says, "been everywhere and done everything-except talk over our conquests with the King of the World. But then," he concludes, "I was always the talker, and Pyrrhus might not really have had that much to say after all?."

In the generation following the death of Alexander the Great, young Cineas of Athens says farewell to his homeland forever. He follows the fortunes of the Alexander's bloodthirsty successors as they battle for domination of the ancient world. Cineas' comrade and chosen champion is the fearsome warrior King Pyrrhus of Epirus. Cineas follows the conquering monarch from battle to intrigue to the beds of the beautiful women also grasping for power in that liberated age. The tale is that--not only of warlike Pyrrhus--but of resourceful and lusty Cineas himself, who was quite a remarkable adventurer in his own right....