ATHENS in 4O4 BCE in a Deme or district of Alopece, in imprecise June dawn Socrates left his house and made a bitter discovery. Under his herm he found the body of Aulone of Melite, a new disciple. He began a dangerous investigation during the turbid and ruthless regime of the Thirty Tyrants, that had been in power for two months, sustained by Sparta that had won the Peloponnesian War.
The opponents risked the confiscation of their wealth and loss of their lives. Socrates uncovered clues related to the crime that took him towards the lords of Athens. He needed little to understand the Aulone was killed at a symposium and was carried into near the home of the Master. The philosopher of Alopece interrogated those who had been at the symposium, helped by his capable disciple Plato.
The path of the investigation is interspersed by ambushes and open threats in an Athens packed with beggars, sycophants and slaves in the ruins of a forgotten splendour. The two eminent philosopher-detectives find the time among the dangers for a philosophical conversation, the mirrors their true thinking. The epilogue ends with the guilty being forces to confess the crime and already foresees their imminent end.