This would not only allow them to lord it over men, it would also enable them to blockade the Olympian gods, starving them into submission in the same way as the Athenians had recently starved the island of Melos into surrender. Pisthetaerus suddenly has the brilliant idea that the birds should stop flying about like simpletons and instead build themselves a great city in the sky. The Hoopoe tells of his life with the birds, and their easy existence of eating and loving. He is persuaded to fetch his master and the Hoopoe himself appears (a not very convincing bird who attributes his paucity of feathers to a severe case of molting). Disillusioned with life in Athens and its law courts, politics, false oracles and military antics, they hope to make a new start in life somewhere else and believe that the Hoopoe/Tereus can advise them.Ī large and threatening-looking bird, who turns out to be the Hoopoe’s servant, demands to know what they are up to and accuses them of being bird-catchers. The play begins with two middle-aged men, Pisthetaerus and Euelpides (roughly translated as Trustyfriend and Goodhope), stumbling across a hillside wilderness in search of Tereus, the legendary Thracian king who was once metamorphosed into the hoopoe bird. The story follows Pisthetaerus, a middle-aged Athenian who persuades the world’s birds to create a new city in the sky (thereby gaining control over all communications between men and gods), and is himself eventually miraculously transformed into a bird-like god figure himself, and replaces Zeus as the pre-eminent power in the cosmos. It was first performed in 414 BCE at the City Dionysia festival, where it won second prize. “ The Birds“ (Gr: “ Ornithes“) is a comedy by the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes. Introduction | Synopsis | Analysis | Resources Introduction Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire (Catullus 8).
Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus (Catullus 5).Passer, deliciae meae puellae (Catullus 2).
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