"A masterful translation of a crucial classic. Martin's Medea is crisp, forceful, swift, witty, and utterly believable and persuasive."--Rachel Hadas, author of Strange Relation: A Memoir of Marriage, Dementia, and Poetry "Most Greek tragedies begin with a supernatural being, or royalty, or even the Chorus itself. This play, though, has no gods; it opens in the voice of the mortal of absolute lowest status in Greek society--not only a woman, but a slave; not only a slave, but a foreigner; indeed, a female foreign slave whose mistress is herself a refugee. . . . [D]eportation, extradition, asylum, exile--Martin emphasizes these timeless issues with a modern vocabulary out of our news cycles." --From the Introduction by A.E. Stallings