A global catastrophe has returned earth to the Iron Age and killed six billion people. Even the billionaires were tricked and eliminated. An Oxford intelligentsia have taken over the planet. Can such smart people rebuild the world in a better way? With help from the galactic federation, perhaps there is hope. But first, earth's new elite must retrieve from the past some things that were destroyed long ago - ways of thinking and living that can avoid a fatal reawakening of the delusions bequeathed to us by Rome. Jake Janaway - young, modest, handsome, and scared - is selected for a dangerous mission into the pre-Roman past. Jake has no idea why he was chosen. Jake has a lot to learn. But perhaps no one in the galaxy ever had better teachers, or was more loved.