by Aristophanes
[FIRST BOY leaves.]
Ah, boy, sing me something before we go in.
It won’t be about aggression—that I’m sure:
your father knows the better part of valor.456
SECOND BOY: “Happy as some Saen457 with my splendid shield Which I flung into a bush as I fled the field . . .”
TRYGAEUS: Tell me, little cockerel,
is that your father that you’re singing of?
SECOND BOY: “. . . and saved my life.”
TRYGAEUS:
But shamed your parents. But let’s go in.
That song you sang about the shield, I’m quite sure you’ll
not forget it, since you are your father’s son.
[reverting to mock-grand manner]
Meanwhile all of you who still remain here
There’s nothing left for you to do but munch.
No resting your oars but manfully to crunch.
Clamp both jaws upon the fodder
And pound away.
For what’s the point, you blackguards, of white teeth
Unless you make them chew?
LEADER: That we will do and we thank you, too, for what you say.
[TRYGAEUS and SECOND BOY go into the house.]
Well now, you ravenous crew, tuck into the cakes and hare.
It’s not every day that cookies cross your path,
So get those teeth busy on the fare.
For if you miss it, you’ll regret it.
[TRYGAEUS comes out of the house decked out as a bridegroom.]
TRYGAEUS:
Banish all evil boding and go to escort the bride
With torches and all the people cheering, here outside.
And take everything you own back to the countryside
With dancing and libations. . . . Hyperbolus expel . . .
With prayers to the gods that the Greeks excel,
That barley be plentiful, and wine as well,
With figs to nibble,
And that our wives bear us young,
and that all we lost once more belong
To us, and that we eschew the gleaming sword.
[CORNUCOPIA, adorned as a bride, issues from the house.]
Come, wife, with me to the countryside
And lie down beautifully, my beauty, by my side.
CHORUS: Sing Hymen, Hymenai O!458
Hymen, Hymenai O!
LEADER: Happy, happy man, Deserving every boon.
CHORUS: Hymen, Hymenai O! Hymen, Hymenai O!
LEADER: What shall we do with the bride?
CHORUS: What shall we do with the bride?
CHORUS: We’ll pick her fruit.
LEADER: Hey, up with the bridegroom, you boys up front!
[TRYGAEUS is hoisted onto young men’s shoulders.]
CHORUS: Hymen, Hymenai O!
Hymen, Hymenai O!
LEADER: His fig is big and strong. Hers is ripe and sweet.
TRYGAEUS: That’s what you’ll say at the feast Swigging wine at the toast.
CHORUS: Hymen, Hymenai O! Hymen, Hymenai O!
TRYGAEUS: Farewell, farewell, and good luck! And, Fellows, if you follow me You’ll be eating cake.
BIRDS
Birds, produced by Calistratus, won second place
in the City Dionysia of 414 B.C., first place going
to Ameipsias with Revelers.
THEME
One might almost say that this elegant lighthearted comedy has no theme. Gone is the need for propaganda to stop the war with Sparta (Acharnians, Peace), precarious though the “Peace of Nicias” proved to be. Gone, too, the need to attack a common demagogue like Cleon (Knights), recently killed in battle. The rising star in the political arena was the aristocratic “golden boy” Alcibiades. With Athens at the height of her power and confidence, it’s as if Aristophanes were saying in this play: Let’s forget about worldly concerns and political issues. Let’s have some fun.
CHARACTERS
EUELPIDES, an Athenian (Mr. Hopeful)
PEISETAIRUS, an Athenian (Mr. Trusting)
SERVANT, of Tereus, now a hoopoe
TEREUS, once King of Thrace, now king of birds
PRIEST
POET
ORACLEMONGER
METON, geometer and astromer
INSPECTOR, from Athens
NEWSAGENT
FIRST MESSENGER
SECOND MESSENGER
IRIS, a swift small-time goddess (Rainbow)
FIRST HERALD
FATHER BEATER
CINESIAS, dithyrambic poet
INFORMER
PROMETHEUS, the Titan who stole fine from Olympus and
gave it to mankind
POSEIDON, god of the sea
HERACLES, deified man
TRIBALLUS, barbarian god
SECOND HERALD
CHORUS, of twenty-four species of birds
SILENT PARTS
CROW
JACKDAW
XANTHIAS, servant of Peisetairus
MANDORUS, servant of Peisetairus
SERVANTS, of Tereus
FLAMINGO
PHEASANT
HOOPOE
GULPER, a turkey
PROCNE, a nightingale, wife of Tereus
FLUTE GIRL, dressed as a crow
SERVANTS, of Peisetairus
PRINCESS
THE STORY
Two middle-aged Athenians, Peisetairus and Euelpides, fed up with the world they live in, decide to go in search of a better one. Under the direction of two pet birds, a crow and a jackdaw, they seek advice from Tereus, who used to be human but is now a hoopoe. The advice leads them nowhere, and suddenly Peisetairus has a brainstorm: why not join up with the bird world and create a new and invincible empire?
He is excited by the idea but wonders how he can get on the good side of the birds, who hate human beings.
OBSERVATIONS
Birds was produced at a time when everything was going well for the Athenians. In the summer of 413 B.C., under the influence of Alcibiades, they had dispatched to Sicily a grand armada designed to curb the growing power of Syracuse and win a foothold in Sicily. A year later, in a mood of imperial pride and confidence, they sent a second expedition to reinforce the first. Unfortunately, Nicias, the general chosen to lead the campaign, was not the man for the job. Cautious and irresolute, he had been against the expedition in the first place. Things began to go wrong. The Athenian fleet found itself trapped in the Bay of Syracuse. Its ships were destroyed; their crews, together with the soldiers they carried, after several days of futile and costly flight, were taken prisoner or killed. Those left of some forty thousand men were either sold as slaves or herded into the stone quarries, which were soon filled with the diseased, the dead, and the dying. Both the Athenian generals, Nicias and Demosthenes, were put to death. Such was the end of a generation of young men: the flower of Athenian manhood. In the words of Thucydides: “Their sufferings were on an enormous scale; their losses, as they say, total: army, navy, everything was destroyed, and out of many only a few returned.”
We must be grateful that none of this disaster had happened or was envisaged when Aristophanes wrote Birds; otherwise we should not have it, or at least we would have a very different play, surely without its sparkle.
As to the two main characters, Peisetairus is essentially the enterprising businessman: practical and decisive. Euelpides is a perfect foil: simple, optimistic, and willing to be led. Tereus is all that one would expect a sovereign to be: gracious and generous.
The Chorus of Birds, initially full of hatred for the human race, is won over by the luminous propaganda of Peisetairus.
Prometheus comes across as a somewhat discontented deity but ready as always to help mankind.
Poseidon is dignified, with old-world good manners.
Heracles is something of a buffoon, and greedy, as always.
Triballus, the barbarian god, is a deified oaf.
Iris is sweet but a rather confused
young thing.
Cinesias the poet is bedraggled and would like a handout.
The soothsayer is on the watch for a rake-off in any transaction.
The rest speak for themselves.
TIME AND SETTING
It is about midday in a rugged terrain of rocks and copses over which PEISETAIRUS and EUELPIDES have been wandering for hours. They have no idea where they are. It is not Greece anymore and the stony path they’ve been following has fizzled out. One carries a JACKDAW on his wrist, the other a CROW. It appears that they are taking directions from these birds. Behind them are their two servants, XANTHIAS and MANDORUS, carrying their bags.
EUELPIDES: [to his JACKDAW] Head for that tree, you say. Am I right?
PEISETAIRUS: My bird, blast him, keeps squawking “Go back!”
EUELPIDES: Listen, genius, if we go on meandering back and forth
we’re done for. What’s the point?
PEISETAIRUS: I feel such a dummy being made to walk
more than a hundred miles because a crow says so.
EUELPIDES: And I feel pathetic,
letting a jackdaw stub my toenails off my toes.
PEISETAIRUS: I haven’t an inkling where on earth we are. Could you find your way home again from here?
EUELPIDES: God knows! Not even Execestides knows.459
PEISETAIRUS: What a bloody mess!
EUELPIDES: Comrade, yes!
The right route is anybody’s guess.
PEISETAIRUS: That nincompoop at the bird shop, Philocrates,†
really let us down, assuring us
that these birds would show us the way to Tereus,‡
he who once was human and now is a bird.
Think of it,
an obol for that little Tharrileides of a daw460
and three for the crow; and the only thing they seem to know
is how to nip.
[to the CROW]
Well, what are you gawping for?
Got a suggestion? . . . What? Make for that cliff?
Don’t be absurd—there isn’t a path there.
EUELPIDES: There isn’t a path anywhere round here.
PEISETAIRUS: Now the crow’s changed his caw,
is croaking about a way to . . .
EUELPIDES: A way to what?
PEISETAIRUS: Bite my fingers off.
EUELPIDES: [turning to the audience]
Isn’t it distressing
that just as we are all primed to go to the crows,461
we’ve no idea how to get there!
You see, good sirs,
we’re sick with a sickness very different from what Sacas has.462
He’s a noncitizen doing his best to become one,
whereas we are the real thing in deme and clan
and can’t be shoved about.
Ironically, it’s we who have packed up and left our native land
on flying feet.
It’s not that we hate our city-state,
which is inherently glorious and blessed,
welcoming all and sundry to come and see
how our savings disappear in thin air
in forfeitures and fines.
Unlike cicadas who trill away on their twigs
only for a couple of months, we
Athenians trill away on our lawsuits for a lifetime.
That’s why we’re tripping forth on this meandering trip,
complete with hamper, earthen jar, and myrtle sprigs,463
in quest of a peaceful spot in which to stop
and for the remainder of our lifetime live.
Our immediate errand is to visit Tereus the hoopoe and to
ask him
if on his aerial peregrinations he’s ever come across
the sort of town we crave.
PEISETAIRUS: What the heck!
EUELPIDES: What’s up, boss?
PEISETAIRUS: My crow keeps telling me to look up on high.
EUELPIDES: My jackdaw too keeps gaping at the sky
as if to draw my attention to something there.
I’ve got a feeling birds are near.
We’ll find out if we make a noise.
PEISETAIRUS: Right! Go ahead and kick that rock.
EUELPIDES: You go ahead and butt it with your head.
It’ll produce twice the sound.
PEISETAIRUS: Get a stone and bang the damn rock.
EUELPIDES: Sure will!
[He bangs the rock with a stone, shouting.]
Hey, boy! Boy!
PEISETAIRUS: What d’you mean, calling Hoopoe “boy”?
You should say “Mr. Hoopoe, sir!”
EUELPIDES: [after much knocking]
Mr. Hoopoe, sir, I’ll simply go on knocking till . . .
[SERVANT of TEREUS appears from behind a facade of rock; he is a bird with an absurdly large beak. XANTHIAS and MANDORUS step aside. The CROW and DAW fly away.]
SERVANT: Who is it? Who’s bawling for my master?
PEISETAIRUS: Holy Apollo! What a pecker!464
SERVANT: Oh brother! A couple of bird robbers!
PEISETAIRUS: Tut tut! That’s slander, and not very polite.
SERVANT: You’re both dead meat.
PEISETAIRUS: Not possible. We’re not men.
SERVANT: What are you, then?
PEISETAIRUS: I’m a yellowhammer, a bird from Libya.
SERVANT: Pull the other!
PEISETAIRUS: I’m serious. Look at my legs—back view.
SERVANT: And the other jerk—what are you?
EUELPIDES: I’m a golden pheasant from Persia.
PEISETAIRUS: And in the name of heaven, what are you,
what sort of creature?
SERVANT: Me? I’m a slave bird.
PEISETAIRUS: No doubt captured by a rooster?
SERVANT: Not that. It’s simply that when my master
turned into a hoopoe, he prayed
that I should turn bird, too,
so’s he’d still have a valet and a butler.
PEISETAIRUS: I wouldn’t have thought a bird needed a butler.
SERVANT: This bird does. P’rhaps it’s because
once he was a human being
and liable to get a sudden craving for sardines,
at which I’d dash for the frying pan and grab some fish.
Or it could be he wanted pea soup,
and off I’d go for ladle and tureen.
PEISETAIRUS: So you’re a wagtail! . . . Know what you can do? Hightail it to your master and say we wish him here.
SERVANT: Not possible. He’s just begun his siesta
after a lunch of myrtle berries and gnats.
PEISETAIRUS: Then wake him up.
SERVANT: All right, if you insist. But he’ll go nuts.
[SERVANT leaves.]
PEISETAIRUS: [shouting after him] And may you rot in hell
for giving me such a shock.
EUELPIDES: It made my jackdaw fly away as well.
PEISETAIRUS: You absolute jerk! . . .
Too scared to stop him flying off!
EUELPIDES: What about your crow? Didn’t you trip and let him go?
PEISETAIRUS: Not I—not on your life!
EUELPIDES: Where is he then?
PEISETAIRUS: He flew off.
EUELPIDES: I see, macho man.
It wasn’t you who let him go!
[The voice of TEREUS from somewhere within]
TEREUS: [regally] Open the portals of the woods
that I may venture forth.
[TEREUS appears, accompanied by two SERVANTS. He has the head of a hoopoe, a huge beak, wings, and measly plumage.]
PEISETAIRUS: Holy Heracles! What kind of freak is this? That beak! That triple crest! That plumage of weeds!
TEREUS: [still grandly] Who is it seeks audience with me?
EUELPIDES: My word! With you the twelve Olympians certainly
went amiss.465
TEREUS: You’re not making fun of me, are you, you two,
b
ecause of my plumage? You see,
good sirs, once I was a man.
PEISETAIRUS: It wasn’t you we were laughing at.
TEREUS: What then?
EUELPIDES: It’s your beak we think so . . . unfortunate.
TEREUS: It’s Sophocles’s fault . . .
in his tragedy called Tereus.466
PEISETAIRUS: So you’re Tereus: a kind of bird? Peacock perhaps?
TEREUS: Let’s just say bird.
EUELPIDES: What’s happened to your feathers, Tereus?
TEREUS: They’re shed.
EUELPIDES: Caught a disease?
TEREUS: No, it’s just that in winter birds molt,
after which we get new feathers. . . .
But who are you two, please?
PEISETAIRUS: Us? We’re human beings.
TEREUS: Of what race?
PEISETAIRUS: From the land of the lordly triremes.
TEREUS: Not justices, I hope?
EUELPIDES: Just the opposite, antijustices, my dear.
TEREUS: So you still breed suchlike over there?
EUELPIDES: Hardly a heap,
but you can still find one or two in the countryside.
TEREUS: What is it, then, you’ve come to hear?
PEISETAIRUS: We’d like to talk to you.
TEREUS: About what?
PEISETAIRUS: Well, you were a man once, it’s said,
like us two, and no doubt in debt, like us two,
and in no hurry to get out of it, like us two:
all of which you’ve given up to be a bird.
You’ve winged over land and sea
with your mind full of human thoughts as well as of a bird’s.
And that is the reason we’ve come to see you,
hoping you can tell us of some lovely, cozy spot
as soft as fleece where both of us can snuggle down.
