After the death of Alexander the Great, one of his generals, Meleager, enraged that everyone else wants to make the unborn son of Roxana, the barbarian queen, king, rebels and kills her. The rebellion was brutally suppressed, but the job was done. The last of the royal family of the Argeads remains Hercules, the son of Alexander from the concubine Barsina, daughter of the satrap Artabazus. Alexander did not recognize the child as legitimate. The boy is 4 years old. He lives with his mother in Pergamon, in the domain of her late father. Eumenes, Alexander's secretary, alarmed by the fate of Hercules, sends a faithful man to hide Barsina and the child from the king's successors. For now.