Cicero, the future Consul of Rome, is just starting out as a trial lawyer in crime-ridden Rome where assassinations for political advantage and for estate grabbing had become de rigueur. The matriarch of a prominent family hires him to defend a relative on a charge of patricide. He faces one of the shrewdest criminal trial prosecutors in the Republic who is backed by powerful political forces with motives to see that his client is convicted and executed in one of the most horrible manners possible.

Exiled from his beloved Venice, Giacomo Casanova flees to Paris at the dawn of the Enlightenment in hopes of putting his reputation as a playboy behind him. But old habits die hard, and temptation is everywhere as Casanova finds a wealth of new opportunity and trouble.