It's festival time in Athens, and Philocles is looking forward to the holiday. Visitors are coming from across the Hellenic world for eight days of sporting competitions, musical contests and sacred rites to honour Athena, the city's patron goddess. Thousands will flock to the Pnyx to be enthralled by three-day performance of Homer's Iliad, an entertainment unique to the Great Panathenaia. Taking part is the highest honour and greatest challenge for an epic poet. Then one of the poets is brutally murdered. Is this random misfortune, an old score being settled, or someone trying to sabotage the festival? The authorities want this cleared up quickly and quietly. Philocles finds himself on the trail of a killer once more¿