Decius Caecilius Metellus, this year's magistrate for cases involving foreigners, thinks he is merely visiting one of the local attractions of southern Italy when he takes a party to visit the Oracle of the Dead, a pre-Roman cult site located at the end of a tunnel dug beneath a temple of Apollo. But there is a bitter rivalry between the priests of Apollo and those of Hecate, who guard the oracle, and when the priests are all killed, the countryside looks to explode in violence as Greeks, Romans, and native Italians of several conquered nations bring out old enmities.