The Birds

Euelpides is a man from Athens who accompanies Peisetairos to the land of the birds, also hoping to leave city life behind. Euelpides, even more so than Peisetairos, seems to long for a life of ease and bliss. Euelpides thus does not share the drive for power that comes to characterize his companion, Peisetairos. Rather, Euelpides seems more concerned with practical matters, such as finding food, shelter, and comfort, making him a kind of foil for the ambitious Peisetairos.

Despite his importance in the first half of the play, Euelpides disappears shortly after the foundation of Cloudcuckooland. As the new city begins to increase in power, Peisetairos quickly becomes the obvious main character, with Euelpides assuming—even retroactively—the role of a mere “sidekick.”

The Chorus is made up of 24 dancers and singers costumed as birds. The members of the Chorus represent 24 different species of birds, and scholars used to suppose that each member was costumed differently—another indication of the prosperity of the period in which the play was first produced. This assumption has been thrown into question by the discovery of a fourth-century vase painting created in Athens. The vase shows two actors wearing nearly identical bird costumes, featuring crested and beaked headpieces, body suits covered in circles, wings, spurs representing talons, and erect phalluses, with the birds dancing on either side of a flute player. If this scene was inspired by Aristophanes’s The Birds—which is very likely—then it would seem that the birds making up the Chorus were all wearing exactly the same costume, it being left to the audience to imagine the different species each of them represented.

The birds of Aristophanes’s play are presented as foolish and easily deceived. They fear humanity and regard Peisetairos and Euelpides as enemies when they first see them, but they are easily persuaded by Peisetairos’s vision for a city of birds. Motivated by Peisetairos’s promise of world domination, they entrust the building of the city to him. Under his leadership, the birds prove to be industrious and efficient, building the walls of Cloudcuckooland with alarming speed.

The Chorus continues to support Peisetairos throughout the play as he drives away impostors and negotiates a new world order with the gods, though the increasingly authoritarian behavior of Peisetairos suggests that, rather than acting in the birds’ interest, he is merely doing what will augment his own power.

The Hoopoe is the leader of the birds. He is based on Tereus, a figure of Greek myth, who was transformed into a Hoopoe following his savage mistreatment of his wife Procne (who appears as the Nightingale) and her sister Philomela.

In the first part of the play, the Hoopoe serves as the mediator between the birds and the human characters Peisetairos and Euelpides: Having lived as both a human and a bird, the Hoopoe has unique insight that enables him to fulfill this role. The Hoopoe’s unique perspective allows him to evaluate the strengths of Peisetairos’s plans for a bird city and to urge the other birds to hear Peisetairos out. However, the Hoopoe completely disappears after Cloudcuckooland begins to go up, with his role as leader of the birds eclipsed by Peisetairos’s rising star.

Iris is the messenger of the gods in Greek mythology. She appears briefly as the walls of Cloudcuckooland are erected, intercepted by the birds as she flies to earth to deliver a message to humanity. Peisetairos’s hostile interaction with the gods marks the beginning of the “war” between the gods and the new bird city, with Peisetairos telling a shocked Iris that he rejects the authority of the traditional gods and promising to block humanity’s offerings to them. Iris is caught off guard by Peisetairos’s hostility, and when her protests prove to be in vain, she has no choice but to retreat and report the new avian developments to the gods.

Prometheus is an enemy of Zeus from Greek mythology. In a myth best known from Hesiod’s Theogony, Prometheus steals fire from the gods and gives it to humanity. In Aristophanes’s The Birds, Prometheus does something in a very similar vein: He arrives stealthily at Cloudcuckooland to advise Peisetairos on how to beat the gods. Huddling beneath a parasol “[t]o stop the gods from noticing [him] down here” (1509), Prometheus reveals to Peisetairos that the gods are wasting away because the new bird city has blocked humanity’s offerings from reaching them. Prometheus explains to Peisetairos that all he needs to do now is demand the scepter of Zeus and the hand of Basileia when the gods send their embassy to negotiate with him. Following this crucial advice, Peisetairos is able to become the new ruler of the cosmos.

Poseidon is one of the two speaking members of the embassy the gods send to negotiate peace with Cloudcuckooland, as the third member of the embassy—the barbarian Triballian god—almost does not say a word and is unintelligible when he does. Poseidon is the senior member of the embassy and lords the fact over the others, fussing with the Triballian’s robe and trying to bully Herakles into voting with him. Poseidon’s desire to maintain the status of the gods is undermined by the foolishness of Herakles and the ignorance of the Triballian god.