At the heart of this story is Diomedes, the last of the great ancient Greek Homeric heroes and a man desperate to return to his beloved homeland after years of war against Troy. But destiny has decided otherwise. Betrayed by his murderous wife and persecuted by hostile gods, he has no choice but to turn his sails west, towards Hesperia, the mysterious mist-shrouded land that will one day be called Italy. He carries with him the magic Talisman of Troy, a mystical, powerful idol that can make tha nation that possesses it invincible. There Diomedes learns that Aeneas, his lifelong Trojan enemy, has landed on the Latian coast. And thus we witness the last great duel, between the champion of a dying world, and the founder of a new nation.