Ode To Belladonna is the story of Simplicious, the last surviving scholar of the Academy at Athens, whose attraction to philosophy and whose single moral failing draw him into both the major events of his age and into deadly conflict with Theodora, Empress of Byzantium. It is a tale of love and hatred, ignorance and enlightenment, and the battle between freedom and an all consuming obsession with power and domination. Set fifteen hundred years ago in fabled Byzantium, the events yet bear a startling resemblance to those of our own time and reveal the tenuous nature of human freedom and the terrible consequences of its loss.