It's 412 BC, and Athen's invasion of Sicily has failed catastrophically. Thousands of Athenian soldiers are held captive in the quarries of Syracuse; starving, dejected and hanging on by the slimmest of threads. Lampo and Gelon are local potters, young men with no work and barely two obols to rub together. When they take to visiting the nearby quarry, they discover prisoners who will, in desperation, recite lines from the play Euripedes for scraps of bread and a scattering of olives. And so an idea is born: the men will put on Medea in the quarry. A proper performance to be sung of down the ages. Because, after all, you can hate the Athenians for invading your territory, but still you love their poetry.
 
But as the audacity of their enterprise dawns on them, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between enemies and friends. As the performance draws near, the men will find their courage tested in ways they never could have imagined...