Publisher's Synopsis
The Birds by Aristophanes The Birds is a comedy by the Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes. It was performed in 414 BC at the City Dionysia where it won second prize. It has been acclaimed by modern critics as a perfectly realized fantasy remarkable for its mimicry of birds and for the gaiety of its songs. Unlike the author's other early plays, it includes no direct mention of the Peloponnesian War and there are few references to Athenian politics, and yet it was staged not long after the commencement of the Sicilian Expedition, an ambitious military campaign that had greatly increased Athenian commitment to the war effort. It is the longest of Aristophanes' surviving plays and yet it is a fairly conventional example of Old Comedy. The play begins with two middle-aged men stumbling across a hillside wilderness, guided by a pet crow and a pet jackdaw. One of them advises the audience that they are fed up with life in Athens, where people do nothing all day but argue over laws, and they are looking for Tereus, a king who was once metamorphosed into the Hoopoe, for they believe he might help them find a better life somewhere else. Just then a very large and fearsome bird emerges from a camouflaged bower, demanding to know what they are up to and accusing them of being bird-catchers. He turns out to be the Hoopoe's servant. They appease him and he returns indoors to fetch his master. Moments later the Hoopoe himself appears-a not very convincing bird who attributes his lack of feathers to a severe case of moulting. He is happy to discuss their plight with them and meanwhile one of them has a brilliant idea-the birds, he says, should stop flying about like idiots and instead should build themselves a great city in the sky, since this would not only allow them to lord it over men, it would also enable them to blockade the Olympian gods in the same way that the Athenians had recently starved the island of Melos into submission. The Hoopoe likes the idea and he agrees to help implement it, provided of course that the two Athenians can first convince all the other birds. He calls to his wife, the Nightingale, and bids her to begin her celestial music. The notes of an unseen flute swell through the theatre and meanwhile the Hoopoe provides the lyrics, summoning the birds of the world from their different habitats-birds of the fields, mountain birds and birds of the trees, birds of the waterways, marshes and seas. These soon begin to appear and each of them is identified by name on arrival. Four of them dance together while the rest form into a Chorus.
