The Birds

“You used to be a man—just like us two.

And owed the city money—just like us two.

And liked not paying your debts—just like us two.

But then you changed your nature for a bird’s,

And flew across the land and over the sea.

Your mind contains the thoughts of man and bird.

That’s why we’ve come as suppliants to your door,

To ask if you know a city that’s warm and woolly—

A place to curl up in, like a big soft blanket.”

Having once been a human being, the Hoopoe occupies a strategic position, as he has experienced the world as a bird as well as a man. The Hoopoe’s hybrid nature introduces The Relationship Between Humanity and Animals that will become important throughout the play. In this passage, Peisetairos and Euelpides hope the Hoopoe will be able to point them toward the kind of carefree land they seek. At first glance, it will seem that the home of the birds is just such a “warm and woolly” land until Peisetairos turns the city of the birds into a parody of the human society that he and Euelpides claimed they were escaping.

“Because the sky revolves, and everything

Traverses it, it’s called the celestial sphere.

If you could colonize and fence it off,

You’d turn this sphere into a global city.

You’ll lord it over men—they’ll be your locusts!

And you’ll starve the gods, just like the siege of Melos.”

Peisetairos introduces his plan to the Hoopoe: The birds should build a city of their own somewhere in their vast celestial realm, although how exactly the birds are to build and fortify a city in the sky is left vague throughout the play. This city will allow the birds to dominate human beings but also the gods, introducing the theme Challenging the Supremacy of the Gods. The “siege of Melos” is an allusion to Diagoras of Melos, a notorious atheist of the fifth century BCE.

“Hoopoopoo! Poopoopoo!

Ee-oo! Ee-oo! Come everyone!

Come all my feathered friends!

[…]

Twee-twee, twee-twee! Twee-twee, twee-twee!

[…]

Trrrr, trrrr! Trrrr, trrrr!

[…]

Tsee-tsee, tsee-tsee!

Kee-wick! Kee-wick!

Tsee-tsee, tsee-tsee, tisisisi!”

Aristophanes’s The Birds is a celebration of sound and music—including the music of unintelligible sounds, such as the chirruping of birds. The relationship between human beings and birds in the play is dynamic and complex, for though the birds do speak (the Hoopoe claims to have taught them this skill), they also retain certain aspects of their bird nature, such as the musicality of their bird song. This blurring of speech and birdsong in turn undermines The Relationship Between Humanity and Animals, at least initially.

“Sound the alarm! Sound the alarm! Strophe

Our world’s betrayed, we’ve been defiled!

A former friend, a fellow-creature,

Who shared these plains, our habitat,

Has now transgressed our ancient laws,

Transgressed the oaths of birds,

And lured me here into a trap.

He’s placed me in the hands of men,

The race of foul, defiling men,

Who’ve been the enemies of birds

Throughout their whole existence.”

The Chorus is initially hostile to Peisetairos and Euelpides, even claiming that the Hoopoe has “transgressed the oath of birds” by bringing them into their territory. These lines highlight the complex—and not always friendly—relationship between human beings and birds, with the birds fearing human beings as creatures who have often captured or hunted them in the past. The birds will be talked into helping Peisetairos and Euelpides soon enough, but elements of the adversarial relationship between humanity and birds will recur throughout the play.

“LEADER. Who are these men, and where’s their home?

HOOPOE. They’re guests of mine, from clever Greece.

LEADER. And what adventure brings them here

To the land of birds?

HOOPOE. They’re passionate

About your style of life up here.

They want to share your world with you.

LEADER. To share our world? Incredible!”

The Leader of the Chorus of birds is at first incredulous about the Hoopoe’s claim that Euelpides and Peisetairos wish to “share” the world of the birds after so many generations of hostility between humans and birds. Of course, Peisetairos and Euelpides will almost immediately transform the “style of life” that they claim to want, doing away with the carefree life of the birds and setting up in its place the imperialistic city of Cloudcuckooland (which becomes in many ways a kind of avian Athens).

“Treacherous always, in all respects,

Is human nature. Still, let’s hear your case.

Perhaps you’ll draw attention to an asset,

Or some great power of mine,

Neglected by me through a lack of insight.

Make public your vision!

For any good you render me

Will be a public gain for all the birds.”

The birds agree to hear out their human visitors, acknowledging that, despite their treachery, humans are more intelligent than birds, who sometimes suffer from “a lack of insight.” The juxtaposition between clever (but often treacherous) humans and foolish birds is prominent throughout the play, representing one of the cornerstones of the play’s broader antithesis in The Relationship Between Humanity and Animals.

“PEISETAIROS. My grief for you is deep:

In former times you lived as kings.

LEADER. We lived as kings—of what?

PEISETAIROS. You lived as kings of everything—of me, of him, of Zeus!

Your origins are older far than Kronos and the Titans,

And even Earth.”

Peisetairos immediately grabs the birds’ attention with his claim that they were the original and thus rightful masters of the cosmos, inventing a new cosmogony founded in the idea that the birds existed long before the primordial gods of Greek myth (“Kronos and the Titans / And even Earth”). The birds are characteristically clueless, expressing surprise at Peisetairos’s claims but ultimately going along with him and accepting his bird-centered cosmogony wholeheartedly as they set out to build their new city. The passage introduces the idea of Fantasy and the Transgression of Natural Law, luring the birds into believing that they could become the dominant power of the cosmos.

“Pride swells in me, pride in your words.

I issue warning, I swear on oath:

Make me a pledge of lasting concord;

Be righteous, guileless, pious (against the gods!),

And if we plan in harmony, those gods won’t hold

My sceptre in their hands much longer now!”

The birds’ initial hostility toward Peisetairos and Euelpides is transformed into an oath of friendship when they hear their plan. The birds seize on the idea of their own divinity and, in so doing, begin Challenging the Supremacy of the Gods. The goal of the new bird city is explicitly to take power away from the gods and “restore” it to the birds, supposedly the rightful rulers of the cosmos.

“Hark, you whose lives are dark and dank, who fall like leaves in autumn,

You puny beings, formed from clay, you shadowy, feeble peoples,

You wingless creatures-of-a-day, pathetic dreamlike humans,

Pay close attention to our words, for we are true immortals,

Who live in air and never age, whose thoughts will never wither.

From us you’ll hear a true account of elevated matters:

The origins of birds and gods and rivers and all creation.”

In the Parabasis, the birds sing a modified cosmogony that stresses their role as the most ancient beings of creation and, thus, as the rightful rulers of the cosmos, taking their cue from Peisetairos’s bold claims in the agon. The birds become godlike beings while humanity is much reduced, addressed by the poetic commonplace as “creatures-of-a-day” as they are contrasted with the immortal birds “who live in air and never age.” The strange cosmogony that follows—in which the birds are the children of the primordial god of love, Eros—draws on traditional themes and story patterns (echoing Hesiod’s Theogony) as well as the more unusual traditions known hazily from Orphic texts.

“So if you treat us as your gods,

We’ll sing our oracles to you

Through all the seasons of the year,

In winter, summer, cold and heat.

We’ll never fly and sulk on high,

The way that Zeus hides in the clouds.

We’ll always give to each of you,

And to your families evermore,

Great wealth-and-health, long lives of peace,

With youth and laughter, dancing, feasts—

In short, birds’ milk for you to drink.

You’ll wallow in such luxury,

You may be quite exhausted!”

This is the birds’ “campaign speech”: If humanity accepts them as their new gods, it will be to their benefit. The birds lavishly promise wealth, joy, and comfort to their devotees—promises that contribute to the utopian atmosphere of the play. In inaugurating a war against the traditional gods, the birds promise that they can be better and more just rulers than the Olympians, even deriding Zeus for “fly[ing] and sulk[ing] on high” and “hid[ing] in the clouds” instead of attending to humanity’s welfare. Their utopianism speaks to Fantasy and the Transgression of Natural Laws as they attempt to upend the traditional order.

“PEISETAIROS. Well, what name shall we give it?

LEADER. Perhaps a name

That suggests the clouds and atmosphere up here—

A light and airy name.

PEISETAIROS. ‘Cloudcuckooland’?

LEADER. Hurrah!

What a wonderful, grandiose name you’ve hit upon!”

Peisetairos and the Chorus Leader wonder what they should name their new city, dismissing several ideas before settling on “Cloudcuckooland.” This is the most common anglicized form of the Greek Nephelokokkygia, a made-up name that combines the Greek word for “cloud” (nephos) and the element -kokkygia, reminiscent of the chirping of birds and thus another example of the motif of sound and speech that is so prominent throughout the play.

“PEISETAIROS. Is all that really mentioned?

ORACLE-MONGER. Take the scroll!

PEISETAIROS. This oracle’s wholly different from the one

I copied down from the lips of Apollo himself:

‘Should the time ever arrive, when a charlatan comes uninvited,

Meddling in other men’s rites, and seeking a share of the innards,

Pay him at once with some blows, and aim them with care at his ribcage—’

ORACLE-MONGER. I don’t believe you’re serious.

PEISETAIROS. Take the scroll!”

Peisetairos’s exchange with the Oracle-Monger is characteristic of his response to the impostors, or alazones, who come to him seeking a place for themselves in Cloudcuckooland. Faced with a barrage of less-than-convincing “oracles” whose authority the Oracle-Monger seeks to demonstrate by furnishing the scroll on which they are written, Peisetairos produces a scroll of his own, this one containing an oracle stating that a “charlatan” who comes to Cloudcuckooland must be beaten. In this exchange, Aristophanes satirizes one of the common features of a Greek city-state—the importance of oracles and divination.

“To me, all-seeing deity,

All-puissant god, the human race

Will sacrifice with pious prayers.

My eyes survey the whole of earth,

I keep its copious fruits quite safe

By killing teeming broods of beasts

Who feed on all that grows in soil,

Crushing the produce of plants in omnivorous jaws,

And sitting on branches devouring the fruit of the trees.

I also kill the ones which blight

All fragrant gardens with their stains.

All manner of insects which creep and which bite

Are caught in the sweep of my wings

And fall to destruction in bloodshed.”

The birds comically describe the benefits they will bestow to the human beings who worship them, becoming bolder and bolder in claiming the place of the traditional gods. The promises of the birds stress at once their new power as well as their avian nature such that even as gods the birds stick to their old (and rather undignified) activities of flying over the earth and eating insects. Though the birds style themselves as “all-seeing” and “all-puissant,” the gulf between bird and human or bird and god is not forgotten.

“Happy the race of feathered birds!

In wintertime they have no need

To wrap themselves in woollen cloaks.

In summer’s stifling heat, in turn,

The sun’s effulgence burns us not:

In blossoming meadows’ leafy bosoms

I make my nest and make my home,

Just when cicadas, melodious creatures, are singing,

Drunk with delight in the sun and the heat of midday.

In winter I retire to caves,

To frolic with the mountain nymphs.

In springtime we feed on the berries of myrtles

(Their flowers all virginal white)

And fruits of the Graces’ own garden.”

The ease of the life of the birds is a recurring theme throughout the play, especially in its contrast with the toil of human life. Yet if the birds live such a perfect life, why found a city? Indeed, the foundation of Cloudcuckooland will embroil the birds in war and the other less-than-carefree concerns of human life, causing the idyllic life of ease originally associated with the birds to become something else entirely by the end of the play, speaking to the complications of Fantasy and the Transgression of Natural Laws.

“PEISETAIROS. Hey! Hey! You, there! Stop flying around at once!

Stay still! Right there! Don’t think of running away!

Who are you? Where are you from? And answer sharp!

IRIS. I’ve come from the gods above, the gods of Olympus.

PEISETAIROS. Well what’s your name? And are you ship—or

helmet?

IRIS. I’m Iris the swift.”

Peisetairos catches Iris, the messenger of the gods, flying through Cloudcuckooland on a dispatch from Zeus. Peisetairos audaciously stops her and questions her, explaining that she can no longer simply fly through the realm of the birds as she once used to do, thereby establishing the new power that the birds have over even the gods.

“PEISETAIROS. You think you’re gods?

IRIS. What other gods exist?

PEISETAIROS. The birds have now become new gods for men:

It’s they who need the sacrifice, not Zeus.”

Peisetairos declares to a befuddled Iris that the birds have taken the place of the gods and that it is thus to the birds that humans must now offer sacrifice. By appropriating the prerogatives of the gods, Peisetairos and Cloudcuckooland pick a very bold fight—Challenging the Supremacy of the Gods—one that they rather surprisingly end up winning.

“Now we’ve barred the way, to Zeus and all the gods.

They can’t come here again, they can’t traverse my city.

No smoke of oxen, victims of sacrifice,

Will rise to gods from men across our space.”

The birds announce their embargo on sacrifices to the gods, thus denying to the gods their accustomed worship. The idea that the gods rely on human offerings to survive—an idea found in other plays by Aristophanes, such as Wealth and Peace—is a kind of satire of the anthropomorphic (human-like) nature of the gods in traditional Greek religion. Of course, the Greek gods were not thought to starve if they did not receive enough sacrifices, but by exaggerating the anthropomorphism of the gods, Aristophanes is able to more effectively establish the anthropomorphized birds as their replacements.

“FATHER-BEATER. I’m simply crazy on birds: I want to fly

And live with you and share your way of life.

PEISETAIROS. Which way of life? The birds have many ways.

FATHER-BEATER. I love them all—especially the way they think

It’s fine for birds to strangle and bite their fathers.

PEISETAIROS. Oh yes, we think it’s really rather tough

For any young bird to set about its father.”

The arrival of the Father-Beater in Cloudcuckooland hints at a darker side of the new city. The Father-Beater is attracted to Cloudcuckooland because of the laxer mores of the birds, who applaud violence against one’s parents. Peisetairos’s acceptance of the Father-Beater—albeit as a soldier—raises the question of whether Cloudcuckooland introduces new, less-than-utopian dangers by embracing acts of violence usually shunned by human society.

“PROMETHEUS. He’s done for—doomed—is Zeus.

PEISETAIROS. Since when?

PROMETHEUS. It happened when you built your aerial city.

All sacrifice from men has finished now;

No smoke of animal thighs has risen up

Since the very day you colonized the sky.

Burnt offerings? None. We’re fasting—like the women

At the Thesmophoria. Now the barbarian gods

Have become so hungry they’re screeching out at us:

They say they’ll bring an army down on Zeus

Unless he gets their markets opened up,

To make their entrail imports safe again.”

Prometheus arrives to inform Peisetairos of the bleak situation facing the gods, who are starving because the birds have blocked humanity’s offerings from reaching them. Prometheus is Zeus’s traditional enemy, chained in one myth to a cliff for stealing fire to the gods and giving it to humanity. Here, Prometheus reprises his role as a traitor to the gods, this time by giving the leader of the birds information on Challenging the Supremacy of the Gods.

“But let me warn you now:

You’ll find that envoys come to seek a peace,

From Zeus himself and from the Triballians too.

But you mustn’t make a treaty unless Zeus gives

His sceptre back again to all the birds,

And gives you Princess, too, to be your wife.”

Prometheus tells Peisetairos exactly how to get the best of Zeus in the negotiations: He must demand the scepter of Zeus as well as the hand of Princess Basileia, the divine personification of government and political power. These lines comically reduce Zeus’s power to two attributes—with at least one of which, the specter, said to have originally belonged to the birds—and thus makes Peisetairos’s remarkable takeover of heaven seem like a surprisingly easy task. This reinforces the thematic preoccupation with Fantasy and the Transgression of Natural Laws in the play.

“PEISETAIROS. Cheese-grater, please. Some silphium as well.

Pass me the cheese, and stir the charcoal there.

POSEIDON. The three of us, all gods, would like to offer

Our friendly greetings.

PEISETAIROS. I’m grating the silphium.

HERAKLES. What kind of meat is this?

PEISETAIROS. It’s certain birds,

Condemned for rising in revolt against

The democratic birds.”

The embassy of the gods—made up of Poseidon, Herakles, and the Triballian—find Peisetairos helping himself to a feast of cooked birds, which he is luxuriously garnishing with the spice known as silphium (considered a delicacy in antiquity). The meal immediately tempts Herakles, who is typically represented as a glutton in ancient comedy. The tableau of the birdified Peisetairos, the founder of Cloudcuckooland, helping himself to a dish of cooked birds “condemned for rising in revolt / Against the democratic birds” has something cannibalistic about it, hinting at the darker side of the mock-utopian city of the birds and reinforcing The Relationship Between Humanity and Animals.

“PEISETAIROS. It wasn’t us who ever took the step

Of starting war with you. So if you’re now

Prepared to stick to justice, we’ll be willing

To make a peace. What ‘justice’ means is this:

That Zeus must give the sceptre back to us,

The birds. And if we come to full agreement

Upon those terms, you’re welcome then to dinner.”

Peisetairos negotiates deftly with Poseidon, knowing from Prometheus what desperate straits the gods are in and that he and the birds have the upper hand. As the dominant party, Peisetairos sets his own definition of “justice,” demanding the scepter of Zeus for the birds as a restoration of the birds’ rightful authority over the cosmos, a key tenet of the play’s avian cosmogony. Even though Peisetairos claims to be speaking for the birds, he seems more and more to be acting in his own interest—especially when he demands for himself the hand of Princess Basileia as a symbol that the gods acknowledge his supremacy.

“Hail, you whose great achievements beggar speech!

Hail, three-times-happy, feathered race of birds!

Come welcome your triumphant ruler home.

He now draws near, resplendent more by far

Than any meteor’s streaming path of gold

Or even than the sun’s own brilliant beam,

Such is the radiance flashing out from him!

He brings a bride whose beauty words can’t tell;

He wields a thunderbolt, Zeus’ wingéd weapon.

An indescribable fragrance fills the vault

Of heaven. The breezes waft into the air

Light wreaths of incense fumes from where he moves.

Here comes the man himself! Now let resound

The sacred chant the Muse’s mouth inspires!”

A Messenger arrives to deliver a brief but grandiose speech in a style that mimics and parodies the “Messenger Speeches” that were a familiar feature of the tragedies of the period. Indeed, only such grandiose style could do justice to the triumph of Peisetairos: The Messenger uses simile and elevated language to describe the fortune attained by Peisetairos, who now returns from the gods as a kind of Zeus, carrying the scepter and thunderbolt of the king of the gods and accompanied by Princess, his divine bride.