Based loosely on Petronius's The Satyricon, Eclipse is a wild, nightmarish adventure. Honest and earnest Tom Jones and his unprincipled stockbroker friend Alex Jenkins rush and wander through a labyrinth of parties and visits to wealthy friends and the parents of wealthy friends, in quest of Sophia Weston, who Tom thinks is virtuous and whom the priapic Alex knows more about. This odyssey, which begins as an escape from academia, becomes a crash course for Tom in the art and science of debauchery, another course Tom does not want to ace. Alex urges Tom on from party to party, from home to home, often in the company of rich wastrels with too much time on their hands and too much liquor in their parents' cabinets. But in spite of Alex's infectious passion for amorality, Tom resists the temptations of theft, promiscuity, swindling and falsehood