In 346 BC, a young Alexander the Great persuades his father to attack the military city-state of Sparta. That fateful event is the snowflake that triggers an avalanche of an alternative history spanning 2,300 years, marking the end of ancient Greece as we know it, and resulting in a Sparta ascendant. And now in modern times, Xenophon, Sparta's Ambassador to the United States, must use all his strength, wits, and cunning to quell an escalating crisis between a crippled US and a Spartan Empire all too eager for war.