A wealthy landowning family in the Roman city of Lixus on the Atlantic coast of Mauretania has to decide what to do when they receive the news that the Vandals are advancing down the coast. Marriage plans are suspended and options are examined. The monks who run a boys school consider sailing west in order to come out on the Eastern Roman Empire. Humor is provided by the beggars in the breadline at the monastery gate, one of whom moves in society and styles himself "the poet laureate of western Mauretania."