Struggling with a financial crisis, a good-looking widow decides to put herself up for grabs. However, going through with it becomes almost impossible with a new love and the legal system thrown into the mix.

Maciste, the first, the one who appeared in Pastrone's film, Cabiria (1916), leaves the screen, evoked by the critic and film historian Steve Della Casa. He wants to know who he is and what he did. Della Casa will help him find his other self, that Bartolomeo Pagano, a camallo (unloader) from the port of Genoa who saw his life transformed by the meeting with the director Pastrone.