The Birds

The Birds is the longest of Aristophanes’ surviving comedies (the Greek text runs to 1,765 lines). Two Athenians, Peisetaerus and Euelpides, tired of the law-courts and taxes of Athens, wander into the wilds to find Tereus, the man who was changed into a hoopoe, and to ask him if he knows of a quiet city to live in. Peisetaerus has a better idea: the birds should found a city in the air between earth and heaven, make themselves lords of mankind, and cut the gods off from the smoke of men’s sacrifices until they surrender (lines 162–193). Persuaded by his account of the birds’ ancient kingship, the birds build the city, called Nephelococcygia (Cloud-cuckoo-land) in the Greek, and Peisetaerus beats off a series of visitors who want to profit from it. He turns away Iris, the messenger of Zeus. He then receives Prometheus, who tells him that Zeus is starving and will send ambassadors, and that he must demand Basileia (Sovereignty) as his bride. Poseidon, Heracles and the barbarian god Triballus arrive; Peisetaerus gets his terms, and the play ends with his wedding procession.

Date and Historical Background

According to the ancient hypothesis to the play, it was produced at the City Dionysia in the archonship of Chabrias (414/413 BC) through Callistratus and won second prize; Ameipsias’ Comastae was first and Phrynichus’ Monotropos third. The year puts the play in the spring after the great Athenian fleet sailed for Sicily in the summer of 415 BC (Thucydides 6.30–32). The play does not name the expedition or the war with Sparta. Its jokes are aimed instead at a crowd of living Athenians, many of them named: the informer-politician Teleas (line 168), the general Nicias (lines 363, 640), the dithyrambic poet Cinesias (lines 1372–1409), the diviner Lampon (lines 521, 988), the astronomer Meton (lines 992–1020), and a long line of others who are turned into birds in the herald’s speech (lines 1290–1299).

The play is rich in song: the Hoopoe’s call to Procne (lines 209–222) and to the birds (lines 227–262), the two parabases (lines 676–800 and 1058–1117), and the wedding hymn (lines 1720–1765).

Characters and Setting

Characters

• Peisetaerus (also spelled Pisthetaerus), an Athenian
• Euelpides, an Athenian companion
• Trochilus, the servant bird of the Hoopoe
• Epops, the Hoopoe, who was once Tereus
• Chorus of birds, with a Leader
• Procne, the Hoopoe’s wife, a nightingale who does not speak (lines 665–675)
• A priest
• A poet
• An oracle-monger
• Meton, the astronomer and surveyor
• An inspector
• A dealer in decrees
• Two messengers and a herald sent to mankind
• Iris, messenger of the gods
• A parricide (a young man who wants to strike his father)
• Cinesias, a dithyrambic poet
• An informer
• Prometheus
• Poseidon, Heracles and Triballus, the ambassadors of the gods
• Manes, a slave

Setting

The first part of the play is set in a wild, rocky country outside the nest of the Hoopoe, with a thicket he enters and leaves (lines 92, 674–675). After the parabasis the scene is the new city in the air, whose wall is built while the sacrifice is performed (lines 1118–1163).

Summary of The Birds

Prologue

The play opens with the two Athenians already lost (lines 1–48). Each carries a bird bought as a guide, Euelpides a jay and Peisetaerus a crow, and each complains that the bird has brought him nowhere. Euelpides blames the bird-seller Philocrates, who sold them the birds for an obol and three obols and claimed that they would lead the way to Tereus, the Hoopoe (lines 13–18). Turning to the audience, Euelpides explains why they have left home: they are not Athens-haters, he says, for the city is great and rich, but the cicadas sing in the fig-trees only a month or two, whereas the Athenians sing out their lawsuits all their lives (lines 30–48). They have come to ask the Hoopoe whether, in his flights over land and sea, he has seen a town of the quiet sort.

The birds point them to a rock. They knock, and a bird with a huge beak rushes out and takes them for bird-catchers (lines 49–63). The two panic, drop their birds, and for safety claim to be birds themselves (lines 64–68). The creature is the servant of the Hoopoe, named Trochilus (line 80). He is a slave-bird; when his master was turned into a hoopoe he begged him to become a bird too and serve him (lines 70–75). He wakes his master, who is asleep after a meal of myrtle-berries and grubs, and Epops comes out in his strange plumage with a triple crest (lines 81–94). When they laugh at his beak he says that Sophocles outrages him this way in his tragedies; he was once Tereus (lines 99–101).

The two ask for a town “in which one can repose as if on thick coverlets” (line 121). Epops asks if they want a bigger city than Athens, and Euelpides says no, a more pleasant one (lines 123–124). Each describes a wish: Euelpides wants a place where a friend knocks at the door at dawn to invite him to a wedding feast, and Peisetaerus wants a city where an angry father will complain in the street that he failed to kiss his handsome son (lines 128–142). The Hoopoe offers a city on the Red Sea, but Euelpides rejects it as a seaport where the Salaminian state galley could arrive with a summons (lines 143–147). He rejects Lepreum in Elis because of Melanthius, and Opuntian Locris because he would not be Opuntian for a talent (lines 149–154). Euelpides then asks what life with the birds is like. The Hoopoe says it is not unpleasant: one has no purse, and for food the gardens give white sesame, myrtle-berries, poppies and mint (lines 155–160).

At this Peisetaerus sees “a great plan, which will transfer the supreme power to the birds” (lines 161–162). He tells Epops that birds should not flutter aimlessly, and should found a city (lines 163–172). He makes him look down and up and round at the sky, which he calls the birds’ pole, so that if they fence it they will have a city (lines 174–184). From there the birds will rule mankind as they rule grasshoppers and starve the gods. The air lies between earth and heaven; as Athenians must ask the Boeotians’ leave to pass to Delphi, so the birds can deny the smoke of sacrifices passage through their territory unless the gods pay tribute (lines 187–193). Epops is delighted and goes into the thicket to wake his wife Procne and summon the birds with a song (lines 194–262).

Parodos (Entrance Song)

The birds come in one by one, and the two Athenians and the Hoopoe name them as they arrive: a flamingo, a Mede-bird that has flown here without a camel, and the Hoopoe’s grandson Callias, who has lost most of his feathers (lines 263–304). When the Chorus is told that two men are among them, it is furious. The birds call the Hoopoe a traitor to the oaths of their kind and prepare to tear the men to pieces (lines 310–352). Peisetaerus arms Euelpides and himself with stew-pots, a spit and dishes against the beaks and talons (lines 356–362). Epops pleads that men and birds are of one family through his wife, and that the wise learn from an enemy (lines 366–382). The Chorus Leader agrees to listen, and Peisetaerus tells Euelpides to put down his weapons (lines 383–391). Epops and the Leader then ask the men who they are, and Epops tells them the pair are the cleverest of men and bring plans of unheard-of benefit (lines 400–432). Before he speaks, Peisetaerus makes the Leader swear a truce that the birds will not bite or peck him (lines 439–447), and Epops dismisses the troops of birds to their nests (lines 448–450).

Agon

Peisetaerus tells the birds they were once kings of all, older than Cronus, the Titans and the Earth (lines 465–470). He cites Aesop, who said that the lark was born before the Earth, so that when its father died there was nowhere to bury him, and the lark buried him in its own head; Euelpides jokes that the lark’s father is therefore buried at Cephalae (lines 471–476). If the birds were born before the Earth and the gods, the kingship is theirs by priority (lines 477–478). He then gives proofs from the cock, who ruled the Persians (which is why he is called the Persian bird and still wears his crest upright like the Great King), the kite, who once ruled the Greeks, and the cuckoo, who was king of Egypt and Phoenicia (lines 481–507). Agamemnon and Menelaus carried a bird on their sceptres, he says, and Zeus stands with an eagle on his head, Athena has her owl and Apollo his hawk (lines 508–516).

The birds, he says, were once so honoured that men swore by them; now men treat them as slaves and fools, throw stones at them, snare them and sell them for the table (lines 518–538). The Chorus is moved and puts its fortunes in his hands (lines 539–548). His plan is to gather the birds into one city, to build a wall of great bricks round the air, like that of Babylon, and to demand the empire back from Zeus (lines 550–554). If Zeus refuses, they will declare a sacred war and forbid the gods to cross the air on their way to seduce Alcmenas, Alopes and Semeles (lines 555–560). They will tell men to sacrifice to the birds first, giving the coot to Aphrodite, the duck to Poseidon, the gull to Heracles, and to the wren, the king-bird, a male gnat before Zeus (lines 561–569). To the objection that men will not take winged creatures for gods, he answers that Hermes, Victory, Eros and Iris all have wings (lines 571–575). Sparrows will eat the seed of those who refuse; crows will peck out the eyes of their oxen (lines 577–584). In return the birds will rid the vines of locusts, show men mines, warn sailors of storms, reveal buried treasure and lengthen life by three hundred years (lines 586–608). The temples will be the olive and the bush, not gold-gated stone (lines 611–626). The Chorus is won over and swears alliance (lines 627–638).

The Hoopoe takes the men into his nest. He asks their names: Peisetaerus gives his own and calls his friend Euelpides of Crioa (lines 639–646). Peisetaerus worries that they cannot fly and recalls Aesop’s fable of the fox who fared badly in alliance with the eagle; Epops says they will eat a certain root and wings will grow (lines 647–656). The Leader asks Epops to call out his mate Procne, who comes out as a silent nightingale; the men are charmed and Euelpides says he would like to kiss her (lines 658–673). All go inside.

First parabasis

The Chorus sings a song to Procne, and its Leader then speaks in the voice of the birds themselves (lines 676–684). This parabasis is addressed to mankind in the name of the birds, who promise to teach “all celestial matters” (lines 685–692). The Chorus gives a cosmogony: Chaos, Night, Erebus and Tartarus existed first; Night laid a wind-egg in the bosom of Erebus; from it, after long ages, Eros with golden wings was born, who mated with winged Chaos in Tartarus and hatched the birds, who therefore are older than the gods (lines 693–702). They offer proofs that they are the children of Eros: they have wings and they help lovers, since many a youth who swore to keep from lovers has been won by the gift of a quail, a goose or a cock (lines 703–707).

The birds then list their services to mankind. The crane’s flight tells the farmer when to sow, the kite marks the spring shearing, the swallow tells men when to buy light clothing; and since men look for omens in every sound, the birds say they are in fact Ammon, Delphi, Dodona and Apollo for mankind (lines 708–722). If men accept them as gods, they promise health, wealth, long life, peace, youth, laughter, song and feasts, “so well off, that you will be weary and cloyed with enjoyment” (lines 723–736). Two half-choruses sing in bird-calls, and one invites anyone who wants a quiet life among the birds to join them: there a man may beat his father, since it is a fine thing, and a runaway slave is only a spotted francolin (lines 737–768). The last half-chorus praises the advantages of wings: a spectator weary of the tragedians could fly home to dinner and be back in time, and an adulterer could fly to his mistress when the husband is seated in the council (lines 769–800).

Episodes

Peisetaerus and Euelpides now come back on stage with wings, and laugh at each other, one like a goose painted by a dauber, the other like a close-shaven blackbird (lines 801–808). They must give the city a name and sacrifice. Euelpides refuses Sparta; he suggests a name drawn from the clouds, and Peisetaerus gives “Nephelococcygia” (lines 809–821). The Leader asks which god shall be patron of the city. Athena Polias is ruled out as unseemly, and Peisetaerus instead picks a cock, a bird of Persian strain, to guard the Pelargicon, the fortification of the Acropolis (lines 826–836). Euelpides is sent to the wall to supervise the workers: he is to carry rubble, tumble down the ladder, post sentinels, and send two heralds, one to the gods and one to men (lines 837–847). Peisetaerus himself stays to sacrifice to the new gods.

A priest arrives, and a series of interruptions begins. The priest invokes the birds as Hestia, the Delian swan, Leto the mother of the quails, and Artemis the goldfinch; when his list of bird-gods grows too long Peisetaerus drives him off and says he will perform the sacrifice himself (lines 862–902). A poet comes with a hymn to Nephelococcygia and begs for a cloak. He gets a tunic and fur, and sings his thanks about a shivery city (lines 904–953). An oracle-monger comes to forbid the sacrifice of the goat and recites an oracle of Bacis that demands a cloak, sandals and a goblet of wine; Peisetaerus produces an oracle from Apollo that tells him to beat such an impostor, and chases him off (lines 959–991). Meton enters with ruler and compass to survey the air into lots; Peisetaerus warns him that strangers are being beaten and that thunder is already rumbling, and drives him away with a beating (lines 992–1020). An inspector arrives, appointed by lot, and is told he has already received his pay when Peisetaerus strikes him (lines 1021–1034). A dealer in decrees comes next with laws for the city, and is beaten too (lines 1035–1055). Peisetaerus finally takes the sacrificial goat indoors.

Second parabasis

The Chorus announces that mortals must now direct their prayers to the birds, who destroy insects that ruin the crops (lines 1058–1071). In answer to the Athenian proclamation of a talent for the death of Diagoras of Melos, they offer a talent for the death of Philocrates the bird-seller, and four if he is brought alive, and they order any bird kept caged to be let loose (lines 1072–1087). Another song praises the life of the birds, who need no cloak in winter and live in cool caverns (lines 1088–1101). The Leader addresses the judges: if they award the prize to the birds, the owls of Laurium will nest in their money-bags and lay coins; if not, the birds will foul their white tunics (lines 1102–1117).

Episodes

Peisetaerus returns to announce that the omens are favourable. A messenger runs in to report that the wall is finished. He says it is so broad that two chariots drawn by horses as big as the Trojan horse could pass on it, it is a hundred stades long, and the birds built it themselves, with cranes carrying stones, storks making bricks, herons carrying mortar in hods, geese shovelling it with their feet, and pelicans cutting the gates (lines 1118–1161). A second messenger rushes in with terrible news: a god sent by Zeus has slipped through the gates without the jays on guard noticing, and thirty thousand hawks have been sent in pursuit (lines 1170–1188). The birds sing that war has been declared against the gods (lines 1189–1197).

The god is Iris, who is intercepted in flight (lines 1199–1200). Peisetaerus questions her as if she were a ship or a smuggler, calls for a buzzard to seize her, and demands to know which gate she used and whether she has a permit from the storks (lines 1203–1218). She says she is sent by Zeus to tell men to sacrifice sheep and oxen, and he answers that men now worship the birds as gods (lines 1230–1236). She threatens the lightning of Zeus, and he answers with the threat of porphyrions and a crude sexual threat against her, and she leaves in a fury (lines 1238–1261). The Chorus forbids the gods to pass through the city (lines 1263–1268).

The herald sent to mankind returns with a golden crown and an account of the bird-mania in Athens: where men once admired Sparta, long hair and fasting, they now rise at dawn like birds, flock to the notices, and take bird-names such as Menippus the swallow, Philocles the lark, and Chaerephon the bat (lines 1271–1305). Ten thousand men are coming to ask for wings, and Peisetaerus tells his slaves to fill baskets with them (lines 1306–1334). A young man wants to join the birds so that he may strangle his father and take his money, and is told of the storks’ law that the young must support the old; Peisetaerus gives him wings and spurs and sends him to fight in Thrace (lines 1337–1371). Cinesias arrives singing a dithyramb and asking for wings to gather songs in the clouds, and Peisetaerus threatens to stop his mouth with the wings (lines 1372–1409). An informer wants wings so that he can fly to the islands, summon strangers to trial and rob them, and Peisetaerus replies by whipping him with the Corcyraean wings (lines 1410–1469).

The Chorus sings of strange things seen on its flights (lines 1470–1493), and then Prometheus arrives, muffled, holding an umbrella so that Zeus will not see him from above (lines 1494–1511). He asks the time and what Zeus is doing before he lowers his mask. His news: since the city in the air was founded no sacrifice reaches the gods, who fast as at the Thesmophoria, and the barbarian gods, the Triballi, are bawling like Illyrians and threaten to attack Zeus unless markets for joints of meat are opened (lines 1514–1531). Zeus will send ambassadors; Peisetaerus must not make peace unless Zeus gives back the sceptre to the birds and gives him Basileia as his wife (lines 1532–1535). She is a fine young girl who keeps Zeus’ thunderbolt, and from her come good counsel, laws, the fleet, and the jurors’ pay (lines 1537–1542). Prometheus hurries off under his umbrella.

The Chorus sings of Socrates and the marsh where he calls up souls (lines 1553–1564). Poseidon, Heracles and the Triballian god arrive as ambassadors (lines 1565–1573). Poseidon scolds Triballus for wearing his cloak on the wrong shoulder and wonders that the gods chose such an envoy. Heracles says he wants to strangle the man who walled them out (lines 1574–1578). Peisetaerus ignores them while he prepares the roasted birds with a sauce, and the hungry Heracles is distracted by the food (lines 1579–1590). Poseidon offers peace and promises rain and fair weather (lines 1591–1595). Peisetaerus replies that the birds will make peace if Zeus gives up his sceptre (lines 1596–1600), and he argues that birds will help the gods by punishing oath-breakers and delinquent sacrificers (lines 1606–1625). Heracles is satisfied at once, Poseidon admits the argument is good, Triballus’ gibberish is taken as agreement, and Poseidon goes along with the other two (lines 1603–1631).

Peisetaerus then adds a last condition: that he must have Basileia (lines 1632–1635). Poseidon proposes that they go home (lines 1635–1636). Heracles asks if they are to go to war over a woman; Poseidon replies that if Zeus died after giving up the sovereignty Heracles would be ruined, being his heir (lines 1638–1645). Peisetaerus answers that Poseidon is deceiving him: Heracles is a bastard, born of a foreign woman, and by Solon’s law will inherit nothing, while Athena is the legitimate heiress; he offers to make Heracles a king and feed him on bird’s milk (lines 1646–1673). Heracles gives in and cedes the girl (lines 1674–1675). Poseidon votes no, and Triballus, asked again, says something Heracles takes as consent. Poseidon gives way (lines 1676–1684). Peisetaerus will come to heaven to receive Basileia, and as he leaves he asks for a splendid tunic for the wedding (lines 1685–1693).

Exodos (Exit Song)

After a short choral song about the tongue-eaters of Phanae (lines 1694–1705), a messenger announces in a tragic style the arrival of the bridegroom. Peisetaerus enters with his bride at his side and the thunderbolt of Zeus in his hand, and the air is full of perfume (lines 1706–1719). The Chorus sings the wedding song and compares the match to the marriage of Zeus and Hera, with Eros holding the reins (lines 1720–1742). Peisetaerus asks the Chorus to praise the thunder and the lightning of Zeus, and then invites the bird-citizens to follow the couple to the palace of Zeus. He asks Basileia to take hold of his wings and dance, and says that he will lift her and carry her through the air (lines 1743–1761). The Chorus ends with a victory cry that hails Peisetaerus as the highest of the gods (lines 1763–1765).

A Brief Analysis

The play is a fantasy in which two men who flee a city of lawsuits end up as masters of the universe. What it shows can be read from the text. The men who run away from Athens find that Athenians follow them: poets, prophets, surveyors, inspectors and informers all arrive in the new city within a few lines of its naming, each wanting a share (lines 904–1055, 1337–1469), and Peisetaerus drives off each by force or trickery. The herald’s report that men in Athens now take bird-names and live like birds suggests that the city has also made the old habits of Athens fashionable (lines 1281–1305).

The play also asks who is to hold power. Peisetaerus persuades the birds with an argument from priority (lines 467–478), and he uses the same tactic again against the gods. He plays on the family quarrel of Poseidon and Heracles over Zeus’ property (lines 1638–1673), and gets the sceptre because the gods are weak and divided. He wins Basileia, whom Prometheus describes as the one who keeps the thunderbolt and from whom all things come (lines 1537–1542). The birds get a wall and a ruler who is not a bird, and when the ambassadors arrive Peisetaerus is on the stage roasting birds that, he says, have been punished with death for attacking the people’s friends (lines 1583–1585). The text itself offers no comment on this.

Several lines refer to the poets: the Hoopoe complains that Sophocles has abused him in his tragedy (lines 100–101), the poet-beggar and Cinesias are driven away (lines 904–953, 1372–1409), Iris speaks in tragic style (lines 1238–1242). The play parodies the language of tragedy and dithyramb, and the birds’ cosmogony takes the form of a Hesiodic genealogy in which Eros, not Zeus, is the origin of the gods (lines 693–703).

The Birds Sources

Aristophanes, Birds, lines 1–1765: the prologue (1–262), the entrance of the birds (263–450), the agon (451–675), the parabases (676–800, 1058–1117), the visitors to Nephelococcygia (859–1057, 1269–1469), Iris (1199–1268), Prometheus (1494–1552), the embassy of the gods (1565–1693) and the wedding (1706–1765). Thucydides 6.30–32 for the sailing of the Sicilian expedition.

See Also: Aristophanes, Athens, Peace, Prometheus Bound