In 1817, a battle of gods and mortals rages in the halls of the British Museum, when the ebullient but deluded history painter Benjamin Robert Haydon takes the young poet he considers to be his protégé, John Keats, to view the recently unveiled statues of the Parthenon. As Haydon tries to awaken his young friend's appreciation of these treasures of antiquity - the goddess Pallas Athena arrives to reclaim them.