BIRDS
(Ornithes)
First produced in 414 BCE
CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY
Euelpides
Peisthetaerus
Xanthias
Manodorus (Manes)
Slave Bird
Tereus
Piper
Flamingo
Attendant Birds
Persian Bird
Hoopoe
Gobbler
Chorus of Birds
Chorus Leader
Procne
Priest
Poet
Oracle Collector
Meton
Inspector
Decree Seller
First Messenger
Second Messenger
Iris
First Herald
Father-Beater
Cinesias
Informer
Prometheus
Poseidon
Heracles
Triballian
Second Herald
Princess
(The setting: 414 BCE, a remote locale in mainland Greece. There is a backdrop that represents a thicket, and a door in it leads to Tereus’s nest. Peisthetaerus and Euelpides enter from stage left. Their slaves, Xanthias and Manodorus, follow, carrying baggage consisting of kettles, bowls, and skewers. Peisthetaerus has a crow perched on his arm, and Euelpides has a jay.)
EUELPIDES: (to his jay)
What, is it straight ahead you’re pointing to,
toward where that tree is over there?
PEISTHETAERUS: (to his crow)
Damn bird,
what are you croaking at me, “Back that way”?
EUELPIDES: (to Peisthetaerus)
Hey, screwup, what good’s walking round in circles?
We’re lost out here and taking routes at random.
PEISTHETAERUS:
To think that I should trust a crow that’s made me,
poor wretch, hike a hundred miles and more!
EUELPIDES:
To think that I should trust a jay that’s made me,
poor sucker, pound the toenails off my toes.
PEISTHETAERUS:
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Heck, I don’t even know where in the world
we’ve wound up. Do you think that you could find
your way back to our native land from here?
EUELPIDES:
Not even Execestideso could find
his way back home from here.
PEISTHETAERUS: (tripping and stumbling into Euelpides)
Goddammit!
EUELPIDES:
Hey there,
keep off my path!
PEISTHETAERUS:
The mad Philocrates,o
that guy who sells birds by the tray, has really
screwed us good. He said that these two birds
would show us how to get to Tereus,
the hoopoe who was once a human being
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but turned into a bird. That jay right there,
a son of Tharrelides,o cost an obol,
and this crow here cost three. What are they good for?
Nothing but nipping at us.
(to the crow)
Hey you there,
where are you staring with your beak wide open?
Do you want to make us climb those cliffs?
There’s no way through them here.
EUELPIDES:
Not even a path.
PEISTHETAERUS:
This crow of mine here must be saying something
about the passage through the cliffs. Ah yes,
he’s croaking something different.
EUELPIDES:
What’s he saying
about the passage?
PEISTHETAERUS:
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Oh, no, nothing other
than that he wants to bite my finger off.
EUELPIDES: (to the audience)
What terrible frustration! Though we want to
go to the birds, and though we’ve brought along
ample provisions, we can’t find the way!
Yes, members of the audience, we’re sick
with just the opposite of the disease
that Sacas has:o he’s not a citizen
but tries to bung in access. We, in contrast,
true-blue Athenians, though we were born
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into a noble tribe and family,
though no one wants to drive us out, are running
with both feet flying to escape our country.
It’s not that we hate Athens. No, it’s not
as if it weren’t a great and prosperous place
for everyone to go broke paying fines in.
It’s just that, though the crickets only chirp
a month or two beneath the fig-tree boughs,
the men of Athens spend their whole lives chirping
over their lawsuits.
So we’ve started walking
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with baskets, cooking pots and myrtle boughs
in search of some relaxing land to settle
and spend our lives in. Tereus the Hoopoe—
he’s what we’re after, so that he can tell us
if he’s ever seen this sort of place
while flying through the sky.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Hey, there.
EUELPIDES:
What is it?
PEISTHETAERUS:
The crow’s been pointing me to something up there
for quite a while now.
EUELPIDES:
And the jay keeps gaping
upward as if he wants to show me something.
There must be birds about. We’ll soon find out
if we start making noise.
PEISTHETAERUS:
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Know what to do?
Go kick that rock.
EUELPIDES:
You hit it with your head,
so that the noise is twice as loud.
PEISTHETAERUS:
No, you
go get a stone and knock.
EUELPIDES:
Alright.
(knocking on a rock with a smaller stone)
Boy! Boy!o
PEISTHETAERUS:
Why are you shouting “Boy!” to call a hoopoe?
You should be shouting “Hoopoe!” not “Boy! Boy!”
EUELPIDES: (knocking and shouting)
Hoopoe! Hoopoe!
(to Peisthetaerus)
Should I just try again?
(again knocking and shouting)
Hoopoe!
(The Slave Bird enters through the stage door. He is wearing a bird mask with a long beak.)
SLAVE BIRD:
Who’s there? Who’s calling for my master?
EUELPIDES:
Goodness, what a gigantic beak he has!
(Euelpides and Peisthetaerus are so frightened that they let go of the birds they are holding.)
SLAVE BIRD: (frightened)
Help, help! We have a pair of bird-thieves here.
EUELPIDES:
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Why be so rude? Why not be more polite?
SLAVE BIRD:
You guys are dead.
EUELPIDES:
But we’re not mortal men.
SLAVE BIRD:
What are you, then?
EUELPIDES: (with his knees knocking in fear)
Me, I’m a scaredy-bird,
native to Libya.o
SLAVE BIRD:
What a bunch of nonsense!
EUELPIDES:
“Nonsense”—really? See what’s on my legs?
SLAVE BIRD:
And this one here, what bird is he?
(to Peisthetaerus)
Speak up!
PEISTHETAERUS:
Me, I’m a shit-bird from the Land of Pheasants.o
EUELPIDES: (to the Slave Bird)
In the name of all the gods, what sort
of creature might you be?
SLAVE BIRD:
Me, I’m a slave bird.
EUELPIDES:
What, did some fighting cock make you a slave?
SLAVE BIRD:
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No. When my master turned into a hoopoe,
he begged me to become a bird as well,
to follow and attend him.
EUELPIDES:
Does a bird
really need a servant?
SLAVE BIRD:
This bird does,
no doubt because he used to be a man.
Sometimes he gets a hankering for sardines
from Phalerum,o and I get out my pail
and run to fetch him some. Sometimes pea soup
is what he wants and, since he needs a ladle
and soup tureen, I run and get them for him.
EUELPIDES: (to Peisthetaerus, pointing at the Slave Bird)
So he’s a runner bird.
(to the Slave Bird)
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Hey, Runner Bird,
you know what you should do? Run for your master.
SLAVE BIRD:
No, he has just lain down to take a nap
after a lunch of grubs and myrtle berries.
EUELPIDES:
Wake him up all the same.
SLAVE BIRD:
I know for certain
he’ll be angry. Still, I’ll wake him up;
I’ll do this special favor for you.
(The Slave Bird exits through the stage door.)
PEISTHETAERUS: (to the departing Slave Bird)
Damn you.
Why, you nearly frightened me to death!
EUELPIDES:
I was so frightened that I lost my jay!
PEISTHETAERUS:
You got so scared you let him go, you coward!
EUELPIDES:
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Say, didn’t you collapse and lose your crow?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Not me.
EUELPIDES:
Where is it, then?
PEISTHETAERUS:
It flew away.
EUELPIDES:
You sure you didn’t let it go? Oh no,
not you, you’re far too brave for that, I guess.
TEREUS: (from behind the backdrop)
Open the forest, that I may emerge!
(Tereus enters through the stage door. He has few feathers and is wearing a bird mask with a crest on top and a beak.)
EUELPIDES:
My goodness, what a fowl this is! What plumage!
What a crest!
TEREUS:
Who is inquiring for me?
EUELPIDES: (looking at Tereus)
The twelve great godso have done you wrong, it seems.
TEREUS:
What, are you taunting me about my feathers?
Strangers, I once was human.
EUELPIDES:
We’re not laughing
at you.
TEREUS:
At what, then?
EUELPIDES:
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It’s your beak. It looks
ridiculous.
TEREUS:
It’s Sophocles that makes me,
Tereus, shameful in his tragedies.o
EUELPIDES:
You’re Tereus? Are you a fowl? A peacock?
TEREUS:
I am a fowl.
EUELPIDES:
Where are your feathers, then?
TEREUS:
They fell off mostly.
EUELPIDES:
Due to some disease?
TEREUS:
No, but in winter all birds molt their feathers,
then grow them back again. And who are you?
EUELPIDES:
Who, us? We’re men.
TEREUS:
What country have you come from?
EUELPIDES:
From the country of attractive warships.o
TEREUS:
What, are you jurors?o
EUELPIDES:
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No, if anything,
we’re anti-jurors.
TEREUS:
What, does non-litigious
seed still sprout among you?
EUELPIDES:
If you squinted,
you’d find a smidgen of it in the country.
TEREUS:
What business brings you here?
EUELPIDES:
We’ve come to see you.
TEREUS:
What for?
EUELPIDES:
Because you used to be a man
like us, because, like us, you once had debts
and didn’t want to pay them. Furthermore,
when you became a bird, you, in your journeys,
surveyed both land and sea, so that you now
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have all the knowledge both of men and birds.
We’ve come, therefore, to ask you please to point us
toward some relaxing town, some place where life’s
like lying on a comfortable blanket.
TEREUS:
You want to find a greater place than Athens?
EUELPIDES:
Not greater, no, just easier to live in.
TEREUS:
Then you are obviously looking for
an aristocracy.o
EUELPIDES:
Not me. No way.
Even the son of Scellias—you know,
the guy named Aristocrateso—disgusts me.
TEREUS:
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What sort of city would you most enjoy
residing in?
EUELPIDES:
The sort of city where
my greatest troubles would be just like this:
A good friend pays a visit in the morning
and tells me, “By Olympian Zeus, make sure
you and the kiddies come around to my place
early, just after you have bathed. I’m giving
a wedding feast. Now don’t you disappoint me
or else you needn’t bother stopping by
to help when I’m in trouble.”
TEREUS: (ironically)
Yes, by Zeus,
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those would indeed be serious, serious troubles.
(to Peisthetaerus)
And you?
PEISTHETAERUS:
I’m after much the same as him.
TEREUS:
Such as?
PEISTHETAERUS:
I want the kind of city where
a sweet boy’s dad will stop me in the street
and say reproachfully, as if I’d wronged him,
“You smooth-talker, when you saw my son
at the gymnasium, fresh from his bath,
you didn’t chat him up or give him kisses
or lead him off somewhere or grope his balls,
so how are you an old friend of the family?”
TEREUS: (ironically)
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O you poor man, what troubles you are after!
(sincerely, to both Euelpides and Peisthetaerus)
There really is a happy city like
the one you have described—it’s on the Red Sea.o
EUELPIDES:
No, nothing with a harbor, nothing where
that ship the Salaminiao can show up
one morning with a bailiff on its deck.
Is there no town in Greece you could suggest?
TEREUS:
Why not go try out Lepreus, in Elis?o
EUELPIDES:
No, by the gods, the city of Lepreus
disgusts me (though I’ve never seen the place)
because Melanthius is a leper.o
TEREUS:
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Well,
there are, in Locris, the Opuntianso—
you could go live with them.
EUELPIDES:
Opuntians?
I wouldn’t be Opuntian if you paid me.
PEISTHETAERUS:
But what is life like here among the birds?
No doubt you know it well.
TEREUS:
It’s very pleasant.
First off, you never need to carry money.
EUELPIDES:
That would eliminate a fair amount
of thievery right there.
TEREUS:
The gardens give us
white sesame seeds, myrtle berries, poppies
and water mint to eat.o
EUELPIDES:
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You birds are living
like newlyweds!
PEISTHETAERUS:
Oh yes! Oh yes! I’m starting
to come up with a plan for all birdkind.
Heed my advice, and you’ll be powerful.
TEREUS:
Heed what advice?
PEISTHETAERUS:
“Heed what advice?” For starters,
don’t fly all over with your beaks agape—
it isn’t dignified. Among us humans,
when we meet someone fickle, we inquire,
“Who is that man that’s flighty as a bird?”
And Teleaso responds, “The man’s a goose—
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brainless and baffling, unreliable,
he never stays in any one place long.”
TEREUS:
By Dionysus, that’s a fair assessment.
What should we do about it?
PEISTHETAERUS:
You should found
a single city.
TEREUS:
Aw, what sort of city
could birds like us establish?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Really? Really?
What a stupid thing to say! Look down.
TEREUS: (looking down)
Alright, I’m looking.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Now look up.
TEREUS: (looking up)
I’m looking.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Now turn your head around.
TEREUS: (rotating his head)
Twisting my head off
is such great fun.
PEISTHETAERUS:
What did you see out there?
TEREUS:
The sky and clouds.
PEISTHETAERUS:
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Well, isn’t that the proper
sphere for you birds?
TEREUS:
Our “sphere”? How do you mean?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Your “place,” if you prefer. Because it covers
the flat round earth, it’s called a “hemisphere.”
Now if you build it up and fortify it,
this “sphere” of sky will soon become your city.
Then you will all rule over humankind
in just the way you now rule over locusts.
Furthermore, you will devastate the gods
with Melian famine.o
TEREUS:
How will we do that?
PEISTHETAERUS:
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Air is what stands between the sky and earth.
In the same way that, when we want to go
to Delphi, we Athenians must ask
the people of Boeotia for a visa,o
you birds, when men burn offerings to the gods,
should stop the smoke from passing through the air
unless the gods agree to pay you tribute.
TEREUS:
Well, well! By earth, by snares, by nets and cages,
I’ve never heard a cleverer idea!
I’d love to join you in establishing
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this city, if my fellow birds agree.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Who will explain the business to them?
TEREUS:
You will.
You see, they’re not barbaric like they were
before I moved here. Now that I have lived
with them a long time, they have learned to speak.
PEISTHETAERUS:
How will you summon them?
TEREUS:
It will be easy.
I will retire into this little thicket
and wake my nightingale, my darling Procne.o
Soon as they hear our voices, they’ll come flying.
PEISTHETAERUS:
My dear, dear hoopoe, don’t just stand there waiting.
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Come on, I beg you, go into the thicket
as quickly as you can and wake up Procne.
(Tereus exits through the stage door and sings from behind the backdrop.)
TEREUS:
Rouse yourself, my companion.
Come, let the sacred music surge
out of your godlike lips. Bemoan
Itys, your son and mine.
He is the cause
of many tears for us.
Come, let your gorgeous throat
emit
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a holy dirge.
(The Piper starts playing from behind the backdrop.)
Pure is the melody
that rises from the green-leafed bryony
to Zeus’s house,
where Phoebus, with his golden hair,
listening to your elegies,o
strumming his ivory lyre
in musical response,
stirs all the gods to dance.
Then from immortal mouths ascend
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divine laments—
a pleasing sound.
EUELPIDES:
Great Zeus in heaven, what a voice he has!
It’s like he’s turned the whole grove into honey.
PEISTHETAERUS: (to Euelpides)
Hey there.
EUELPIDES:
What’s the matter?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Quiet.
EUELPIDES:
Why?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Because the Hoopoe’s going to sing again.
TEREUS:
Epopopoi popopopoi popoi,
ee-you, ee-you, ee-to, ee-to,o
come here, all you endowed with wings,
all you who flutter over acres
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of fertile land, you myriad throngs
who feed on grain, you swift seed-pickers
who warble such delightful songs.
Come all that over furrowed ground
twitter, molto espressivo,
this pleasant sound—
tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio.
You garden birds who feed on ivy boughs,
you mountain birds who eat wild strawberries
and oleaster, hasten toward my voice—
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trioto, trioto, totobrix.
Come all who in the swampy lowlands feast
on sharp-mouthed gnats, all you who dwell
in lands of much rainfall
and on the luscious plain of Marathon,
and you, too, bird with dappled breast,
O francolin, O francolin.
All you who, like the halcyons, fly
over the salt swell of the sea,
come hear the news. I’m calling in
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every breed of long-necked bird.
A clever old man has appeared,
a man of ingenuity,
an active man who gets things done.
All of you come to the assembly now!
Torotorotorotorotix!
Kikkabau! Kikkabau!
Torotorotorolililix!
PEISTHETAERUS: (to Euelpides, who is looking upward)
See any birds?
EUELPIDES:
I sure don’t, though I’m straining
my eyes to scan the sky.
PEISTHETAERUS:
It seems the Hoopoe
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went into the grove and started clucking
to no avail.
TEREUS:
Torotix, torotix!
PEISTHETAERUS:
Hey, check it out, my friend: a bird is coming!
(Flamingo enters, dancing, from stage left.)
EUELPIDES:
That’s a bird alright.
What kind of bird, though? Possibly a peacock?
(Tereus reenters from the stage door, flanked by two Attendant Birds.)
PEISTHETAERUS:
Tereus will tell us.
(to Tereus)
What kind of bird is that?
TEREUS:
Not one of those you men are used to watching:
he’s a marsh-bird.
EUELPIDES:
Oh my goodness, but he’s flamingly attractive.
TEREUS:
And that’s appropriate—his name’s Flamingo.
EUELPIDES: (to Peisthetaerus)
Hey there! Hey! Yeah, you.
PEISTHETAERUS:
What are you shouting for?
EUELPIDES:
Another bird is coming.
(The Persian Bird [a rooster] enters, dancing, from stage right.)
PEISTHETAERUS:
Yes, there is:
a foreign-looking bird.
(to Tereus)
What in the world’s this musical diviner,
this exotic mountain-traveler?
TEREUS:
His name is Persian.o
PEISTHETAERUS:
Persian?
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Why, if he’s one of those, how did he fly in here without a camel?o
(The Hoopoe enters, dancing, from stage left.)
EUELPIDES: (to Tereus)
Here’s a bird who has a crest like yours.
PEISTHETAERUS:
How fascinating! So
you aren’t the only hoopoe hereabouts but there’s this other one?
TEREUS:
This Hoopoe is the son of Philocleso the Hoopoe’s son,
so I’m his grandpa. Just as you might say, “Here’s Callias’s son
Hipponicus” and “Callias Hipponicus’s son.”
PEISTHETAERUS:
This bird
is Callias! He sure has lost a lot of feathers.o
EUELPIDES:
That’s because
he’s pedigreed. He gets them plucked by the informers, and his women,
too, keep plucking at them.
(Gobbler enters, dancing, from stage right.)
PEISTHETAERUS:
Here’s another brightly colored bird.
What do you call him?
TEREUS:
This one? Gobbler.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Wait, you mean Cleonymuso
is not the only gobbler?
EUELPIDES:
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If this really were Cleonymus,
he surely would have thrown his crest away.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Hey, for what reason do
so many of the birds have crests? Do they intend to march like soldiers?
TEREUS:
No, no, my friend. They are like Carians:o they roost on crests for safety.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Holy—look at what an awful lot of birds are gathering here!
EUELPIDES:
My goodness, what a cloud! You can’t make out the aisles for all the wings!
(Other birds now enter. They will constitute the Chorus of Birds. Flamingo, Persian Bird, Hoopoe, and Gobbler exit, dancing, down the side aisles.)
TEREUS:
That one’s a partridge.
EUELPIDES:
That one there a francolin.
PEISTHETAERUS:
And there’s a widgeon.
EUELPIDES:
This here’s a halcyon.
PEISTHETAERUS:
And what’s that one behind the halcyon?
TEREUS:
Right there—the barber.
PEISTHETAERUS:
What? a barber bird?
TEREUS:
Sure Sporgiluso is one.
Here comes an owl.
EUELPIDES:
What are you saying? Who has brought an owl to Athens?o
TEREUS:
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Turtledove, Magpie, Horned Owl, Swallow. Buzzard and Pigeon, Ring Dove, Falcon.
Purple-Cap, Red-Cap, Red-Foot, Cuckoo. Woodpecker, Kestrel, Dabchick, Bunting
and Lammergeier.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Look at all those birds! Those big beaks! How they scold
and strut around trying to screech the loudest. Are they angry with us?
Are they ogling us with beaks agape?
EUELPIDES:
That’s how it seems to me.
CHORUS:
Whe-whe-whe-whe-where’s the man who called me? Where’s he come to roost?
TEREUS:
Here I am. I’ve been waiting for you. I don’t disappoint my friends.
CHORUS:
Wha-wha-wha-wha-what message do you have for me, your friend?
TEREUS:
One that applies to all, promotes our safety, and is right and sweet
and valuable. Two men have come to us, a pair of intellectuals.
CHORUS:
Where? How?
TEREUS:
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Just what I said: diplomats from the world of men have come.
They’ve brought a monumental plan along with them to prop us up.
CHORUS:
What are you saying to us? You have done the worst thing to be done
since I was fledged!
TEREUS:
Hold on a moment. Now don’t let my words upset you.
CHORUS:
What have you done to us?
TEREUS:
All that I’ve done is welcome in two men
who love our ways.
CHORUS:
You’ve really gone and done this?
TEREUS:
Yes. I’m glad of it.
CHORUS:
And they’re already here somewhere among us?
TEREUS:
Just as much as I am.
CHORUS:
Strophe
We have been cheated! We have been abused!
Our friend, who fed on the same fields with us,
has violated our long-standing trust,
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broken the oaths that link the avian race.
This so-called friend has lured us into snares,
betrayed us to the violent tribe of men
who, from their start, have been
our murderers.
CHORUS:
We’ll settle our account with this bird later.
(turning to Peisthetaerus and Euelpides)
Right now we’ll attend,
I think, to these two geezers: they’ll be torn apart.
PEISTHETAERUS:
We’re done for, then.
EUELPIDES: (to Peisthetaerus)
You are the one I blame for this. Why did you lead me way up here?
PEISTHETAERUS:
To have you with me.
EUELPIDES:
No, more like to make me weep big tears.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Come on,
that makes no sense at all: How will you weep with both your eyes pecked out?
CHORUS: (moving aggressively toward Peisthetaerus and Euelpides in military formation)
Antistrophe
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Start marching! Launch an onslaught! Batter them
with wingbeats! Hem them in! Attack! Attack!
Oh yes, the two of them will learn to scream.
They both will feed fresh gobbets to my beak.
There is no shady mountain, no gray sea,
no bank of clouds above us anywhere
that can conceal this pair
of men from me.
CHORUS LEADER:
Quick, peck them, nip them. Where’s the sergeant? Have him lead the right wing in.
EUELPIDES:
Oh no! Oh no! Where can I run and hide? I’m done for!
PEISTHETAERUS:
Stand your ground!
EUELPIDES:
So they can tear me limb from limb?
PEISTHETAERUS:
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How do you think you’ll get away?
EUELPIDES:
I couldn’t tell you.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Well, I’ll tell you: we should stand and fight it out.
Take up those kettles.
EUELPIDES:
How will kettles help?
PEISTHETAERUS:
The owl won’t get us then.o
(Peisthetaerus, Euelpides, Xanthias, and Manodorus pick up the kettles and hold them like shields.)
EUELPIDES:
Just look at those hooked claws!
PEISTHETAERUS:
Take up a skewer and plant it in the ground
before your feet.
(Peisthetaerus, Euelpides, Xanthias, and Manodorus stick the skewers in the ground like a palisade.)
EUELPIDES:
But what about my eyeballs?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Use a bowl or saucer
to shield them.
(Peisthetaerus, Euelpides, Xanthias, and Manodorus put bowls on their heads to serve as helmets.)
EUELPIDES:
Genius! How inventive! How strategic! When it comes
to cleverness, you are a greater general than Nicias!o
CHORUS LEADER:
Charge at them! Raise your beaks and charge! No shrinking from the fray!
Tear them, peck them, beat them, slay them! First, though, take that kettle out!
(Tereus steps between the Chorus, on one side, and Peisthetaerus and Euelpides, on the other.)
TEREUS: (to the Chorus)
O cruelest of the creatures, why do you intend to kill,
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to mutilate this pair of men? They’ve never done you any harm.
They are, in fact, the relatives and fellow tribesmen of my wife.o
CHORUS LEADER:
Why should we show more mercy to these humans than to wolves? There are
no enemies more execrable that we could take vengeance on.
TEREUS:
Suppose that, though your enemies by nature, they are friends at heart?
They’ve come to give you valuable advice.
CHORUS LEADER:
How could these men, the foes
to our great-great-grandfathers, ever give us valuable suggestions
or sound advice?
TEREUS:
The wise learn much from foes. Foresight secures all things—
a lesson that you cannot learn from friends but that an enemy
forces you into. For example, it was enemies, not friends,
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who taught our cities how to build high walls and fit out ships for war.
This is the knowledge that protects our families, households and wealth.
CHORUS LEADER: (to the Chorus)
Alright. I guess it’s better if we hear them out. One can be taught
something constructive even by a foe.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Their wrath, it seems, is cooling.
Fall back.
TEREUS: (to the Chorus Leader)
It’s just that you should do this. You will thank me for it later.
CHORUS LEADER:
Trust me, I never meant to act against your counsel till today.
EUELPIDES:
They are behaving in a less aggressive manner now.
PEISTHETAERUS:
They are.
(to Xanthias, Manodorus, and Euelpides, singing)
Put down the bowls, now. Put the kettle down.
Shoulder your spear—that skewer, I mean.
(Peisthetaerus, Euelpides, Xanthias, and Manodorus put down the kettles and bowls and shoulder the skewers.)
Now we should march around within
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the bounds of our encampment, looking out
along the kettle’s rim.
We must not retreat.
EUELPIDES:
Tell me, if we do get killed,
where will our bodies find a home?
PEISTHETAERUS:
We will be planted in the field
for military heroes. Yes,
we’ll tell the generals we died
fighting our country’s foes
at Finchburg.o
CHORUS LEADER:
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Re-form your ranks and ground your spirit beside
your anger, as the hopliteso do.
Let’s find out who
these men are, where they’re from
and why they’ve come.
Hoopoe, hello? I’m calling you.
TEREUS:
What are you summoning me for?
CHORUS LEADER:
Who are these humans and from where?
TEREUS:
Two strangers out of Greece,
the country of the wise.
CHORUS LEADER:
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What need or circumstance
has brought them to the birds?
TEREUS:
A great desire
to live the way you live,
to share your home with you
and do all that you do.
CHORUS LEADER:
What do you mean? What are their plans?
TEREUS:
They’re marvelous! Beyond belief!
CHORUS LEADER: (pointing at Peisthetaerus)
What, is he hoping to receive
some benefit by being with me?
To overpower an enemy?
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To help his friends advance?
TEREUS:
He speaks of great prosperity,
marvelous, unbelievable
good fortune. He
insists that you can have it all,
what’s here, there and beyond.
CHORUS LEADER:
Is he insane?
TEREUS:
His mind
is most emphatically sane.
CHORUS LEADER:
Is he a clever man?
TEREUS:
The slyest fox resides in him.
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He is all cleverness
and cunning, he is ingenuity’s
crème de la crème.
CHORUS LEADER:
Get him to tell me, tell me, then.
Hearing what you’ve been saying
has set my spirit flying.
TEREUS: (to the Attendant Birds)
Alright, then, you and you collect this gear
and hang it in the kitchen, solemnly,
above the tripod near the fire.
(The Attendant Birds pick up the kettles, bowls, and skewers and carry them out through the stage door.)
(to Peisthetaerus)
And you
address the birds, apprise them of the reasons
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why I have summoned them to me today.
PEISTHETAERUS:
I won’t address them, not until they make
the selfsame deal with me the knife-maker
(who was an ape)o made with his wife: to wit,
no using teeth, no yanking on the balls,
no poking in the—
EUELPIDES:
Hold on, not the—
PEISTHETAERUS:
No.
I mean the eyes.
CHORUS LEADER:
I promise.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Swear.
CHORUS LEADER:
I swear
and, if I keep my promise, may the judgeso
and audience unanimously give me
the victory.
PEISTHETAERUS:
I’m certain you will win.
TEREUS:
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And, if I break my promise, may I win
by one vote only.
PEISTHETAERUS: (to Xanthias, Manodorus, and Euelpides)
Everybody, listen.
You foot soldiers may pick these weapons up
and go back home. Be sure to keep an eye out
for future orders posted on the boards.o
(Xanthias and Manodorus carry the makeshift weapons and armor out through the stage door, then return.)
CHORUS: (to Tereus)
Strophe
Man has evolved a character that is
wholly deceptive. Still, do make your case.
There may well be some power you have found
in me, some possibility my simple mind
has overlooked. Speak up. It’s in your own
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best interest as much as it’s in mine:
whatever benefit you find for me
will benefit us all collectively.
CHORUS LEADER: (to Peisthetaerus)
Now, about this scheme of yours you’ve come to sell us on—
don’t be afraid to speak your piece. I promise we won’t break
the truce beforehand.
PEISTHETAERUS:
I’m just bursting with desire to tell you.
I’ve mixed my speech’s dough, and nothing’s going to prevent me
from kneading it into a loaf.
(to Xanthias and Manodorus)
Bring me a garland, boy,
and one of you get water so that I can wash my hands.
EUELPIDES:
Are we preparing for a feast, or what?
PEISTHETAERUS:
No, no, by Zeus;
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it’s nice and juicy words that I’ve been after for a while now,
words that will melt the hearts of birds.
(to the Chorus)
I feel so bad for you—
you once were kings . . .
CHORUS LEADER:
Us, kings? Of what?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Of everything that is,
of me, and this man here and even Zeus himself, and you
were born long, long before the Titans, Cronus, even Earth.o
CHORUS:
Before the Earth?
PEISTHETAERUS:
I swear to you, it’s true.
CHORUS:
I’d never heard that.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Well, that’s because you are, by nature, ignorant and heedless.
What’s more, you’ve never read your Aesop.o He’s the one that tells us
the Lark was born before all other things, before Earth even.
Her father died of sickness and, because the Earth did not
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exist yet, lay there uninterred for four whole days. The Lark
was at a loss and out of desperation laid her father
to rest in her own head.
EUELPIDES:
And so the father of the Lark
lies dead in Headley Park.o
PEISTHETAERUS:
Thus, since the two of them existed
before the Earth and gods, the kingship properly is theirs
through primogeniture.
EUELPIDES: (to the Chorus)
That’s right, but hone your beaks for battle.
Zeus won’t be quick to hand the woodpecker his royal scepter.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Long long ago it wasn’t gods who ruled mankind as kings,
but birds. I have a thousand ways of proving this. For starters,
I’ll point you to the cock who ruled the Persians long before
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all those Dariuses and Megabazuses.o And so,
in memory of that time, he’s called the Persian Bird today.
EUELPIDES:
Even now the rooster struts about like the Great King,
the only bird to wear his crown uncocked upon his head.
PEISTHETAERUS:
So great and powerful and formidable was the rooster
that still today, because of the authority he had,
everyone jumps up out of bed as soon as he proclaims
daybreak: blacksmiths and potters, shoemakers and tanners, bathmen,
grain dealers, lyre-makers, armorers—they all put on their shoes
and head out . . .
EUELPIDES:
So it was for me. One time I, wretched moron,
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lost a cloak made out of Phrygian wool because of him.
I’d been invited to a newborn infant’s name-day partyo
in Athens and had gotten drunk and passed out back at home
when, hungrier than all the rest, I guess, this rooster started
crowing early. I assumed that dawn was near, so I
set out for Halimus. Soon as I slip outside the walls,
this mugger comes up on me from behind and whacks me good,
and down I go. Well, I’m there just about to shout for help,
but he’s already made off with my cloak.
PEISTHETAERUS: (to the Chorus)
What’s more, the bird
they call the “kite”o once ruled as despot over all the Greeks.
CHORUS LEADER:
The Greeks?
PEISTHETAERUS:
510
It’s true, and when he was the king, he taught the Greeks the custom
of rolling on the ground in front of kites.
EUELPIDES:
Of course! One time
I saw a kite and started rolling and, while I was leaning
back with my lips agape, I up and unintentionally
swallowed an obol that was in my mouth.o I had to drag
my shopping bag home empty.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Furthermore, the cuckoo once
was king of Egypt and Phoenicia.o When he called out “cuckoo,”
all the Phoenicians rushed to reap their fields of wheat and barley.
EUELPIDES:
Oh, that explains the proverb, “Cuckoo! Dicks up. Hit the field.”o
PEISTHETAERUS:
The birds had such authority, in fact, that if some Agamemnon
520
or Menelauso ever was a king in Greece, a bird
would perch atop his royal staff and take a share of all
the presents he received.
EUELPIDES:
Of course! I used to wonder when,
at the performance of a tragedy, I saw, say, Priamo
enter with a bird. That bird, of course, was perching there
to reckon up the offerings Lysicrates embezzled.o
PEISTHETAERUS:
But here’s the strongest proof of all: Zeus, who is now in charge,
stands with an eagle on his head to symbolize his kingship.
His daughter Athena has an owl, and his attendant god,
Apollo, has a hawk.o
EUELPIDES:
That’s right. But why do they have birds?
PEISTHETAERUS:
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So that when someone makes the customary sacrifice
and offers Zeus the guts, the birds can snatch them up before
Zeus gets his portion. In those days nobody would swear
in gods’ names. No, they swore by birds instead, and still today
Lampon,o whenever he is keen to rip somebody off,
swears “by the goose.”
It’s clear, then, that you once were great and sacred,
but now you are looked upon as slaves, as idiots,
as being like Manes.o Nowadays people
pelt you with stones as if you were madmen.
Even in temples the hunters of birds
540
go after you with nooses and snares,
limed twigs and toils, meshes and nets
and baited traps. And when you’re caught,
you’re sold in bulk, and customers grope you.
Nor are they content to serve you up
roasted—they add on grated cheese,
oil, vinegar and silphium.o
They whip up a second sweet, slick sauce,
which is poured, hot, on your heated backs,
as if you fowl were rotten meat.
CHORUS:
Antistrophe
550
Human, the tale that you have shared with us
is horrible. Our fathers’ cowardice,
their failure to bequeath to this my age
their own forefathers’ special privilege,
has made me weep. But fortune or a god
has sent you here today to give us aid.
From here on out I shall entrust you with
my own life and my chicks’. You’ve earned my faith.
CHORUS LEADER:
Now tell us quick what we should do. Our life will be insufferable
if we do not try to regain our sovereignty by every means.
PEISTHETAERUS:
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Alright, the first thing I prescribe is this: that all you birds construct
a single city and surround the space between the earth and sky
with walls of large baked bricks, just like the builders did at Babylon.o
CHORUS LEADER:
O Cebriones! O Porphyrion!o How strong a citadel!
PEISTHETAERUS:
Then, when the wall is done, you should demand that Zeus return his kingship.
If he does not agree, if he refuses and does not give in,
you should proclaim a holy war against him and deny the gods
the right to pass through your domains with boners, like, you know,
they used to do to screw their Semeles, Alcmenas and Alopes.o
If they keep on passing through your realm, then fit their wieners all
570
with too-tight cock rings, so they can’t fuck mortal females anymore.
Then you should send a second messenger, this time to humankind,
to tell them that they must make sacrifice henceforth to birds because
the birds are kings. (Henceforth the gods get seconds.) Furthermore, mankind
must find appropriate avian counterparts for all the former gods:
If they are making sacrifice to Aphrodite, they should offer
nuts to the penis-bird.o If they are offering Poseidon sheep,
bestow granola on a duck. Instead of giving Heracles
sacrifice, give a cormorant a honey cake. If they are giving
a ram to King Zeus, they should give a gnat that has its nuts intact
580
to the king bird, the nuthatch, first, before they sacrifice to Zeus.
EUELPIDES:
Gutting a gnat! That’s beautiful! Now let the great Zano boom away.
CHORUS LEADER:
How, though, will humans come to see us as divinities, not jays?
We all wear wings and fly around.
PEISTHETAERUS:
That makes no sense. Consider Hermes:
he is a winged god and he flies around, and so do many other gods.
Victory flies around on golden wings, and so, of course, does Eros.
The poet Homer even likens Iris to “a trembling dove.”
EUELPIDES:
Won’t Zeus hurl thunder at us and deploy his “wingéd lightning bolt”?
PEISTHETAERUS: (ignoring Euelpides)
Finally, if humans in their blindness still insist that you are nothing
and go on venerating the Olympian gods, then clouds of sparrows,
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jackdaws, and starlings should descend upon their fields and eat their seeds up.
Then, when mankind is starving, we’ll see if Demeter doles out grain.
EUELPIDES:
I bet she’d welch on humans then. Oh yeah, she’d come up with excuses.
PEISTHETAERUS:
And then the crows will come and peck the eyes out of the oxen harnessed
to till the field. We’ll see if Dr. Phoebuso heals them—and gets paid.
EUELPIDES:
No, don’t send crows. At least not till I’ve sold my little pair of oxen.
PEISTHETAERUS:
If, on the contrary, they do accept you as divinities
such as Poseidon, Cronus and the Principle of Life Itself,o
they will be loaded down with blessings.
CHORUS LEADER:
Blessings? Give me an example.
PEISTHETAERUS:
First off, the locusts won’t be eating all the vine blooms any longer—
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a company of owls and kestrels will devour the infestation.
Secondly, bugs like mites and gallflies won’t be ruining the figs—
a single flock of thrushes will exterminate the lot of them.
CHORUS LEADER:
How will we make the humans wealthy? That’s the thing they covet most.
PEISTHETAERUS:
When they consult the omens, you will show them where the richest mines are
and tell the prophets which sea voyages will be most profitable,
and never will another sailor perish in a shipwreck.
CHORUS LEADER:
Why?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Because, when someone comes to read the signs before a trip abroad,
some omen from a bird will always say, “Don’t go! A storm is brewing,”
or else, “Proceed. This business venture will be very profitable.”
EUELPIDES:
610
I’ll buy a ship and go to sea. No way I’m staying here with you.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Also, you will reveal to them where all the ancient treasures lie,
because you know. People are always saying, “No one but a bird
knows where my treasure is.”
EUELPIDES:
I’ll sell my boat and buy a spade
and dig up troves!
CHORUS LEADER:
But who will give them health, the gods’ prerogative?
PEISTHETAERUS:
The greater part of health is happiness. The miserable man
is never well.
CHORUS LEADER:
Longevity dwells on Olympus. How will humans
get access to it? Must they die in what must feel like early youth?
PEISTHETAERUS:
No, because birds will give them an additional three hundred years.
CHORUS LEADER:
From whom, though, will these years be taken?
PEISTHETAERUS:
From the birds themselves, of course.
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Doesn’t the raucous raven live five times the lifetime of a man?
EUELPIDES:
My goodness, but these birds would make far better kings for us than Zeus!
PEISTHETAERUS:
Far better. To start with, we won’t have to build
temples out of stone for birds
and gild their gateways. No, they’ll dwell
in shrubberies and oak-tree groves.
The most revered of all the birds
will have no other temple than
the branches of the olive tree.
There won’t be any need to go
630
to Delphi or Ammono to sacrifice—
No, standing amid the wild olives
and strawberries, we’ll hold out handfuls
of barley and implore the birds
please to allow us some small portion
of all the blessings they enjoy,
and we’ll be granted them at the price
of just a couple of grains of wheat.
CHORUS LEADER:
You were my biggest foe, old man, but now you are my dearest friend.
It’s inconceivable that I could disregard this plan of yours.
CHORUS:
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Your words have made me brave:
I give notice and swear
that, if you bring just, holy and sincere
proposals to my cause,
if you align
your thoughts with mine
and help me fight the gods above,
not much longer will they abuse
the sacred staff I should possess.
CHORUS LEADER:
We birds will deal with all things that demand the use of strength;
650
you, on your side, take care of what requires deliberation.
PEISTHETAERUS: (gesturing toward the stage door)
Listen, now’s not the time to stand around
and lollygag like General Nicias.o
We need to act as swiftly as we can!
TEREUS:
First, though, come to this nest, my nest built out
of brush and straw; and tell your names to me.
PEISTHETAERUS:
That’s easy: you can call me Peisthetaerus
and him Euelpides of Crioa.o
TEREUS:
My greetings to you.
PEISTHETAERUS:
We thank you for your greetings.
TEREUS:
Come in.
PEISTHETAERUS:
We’re coming. You’re the one who must
escort us in and introduce us.
TEREUS:
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Come, then.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Hey, wait! Come back down here. Come back and tell us
how we are going to follow you in there,
when you can fly and we cannot.
TEREUS:
I see.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Remember Aesop’s fables. There’s this one
in which things turned out badly for the fox
because she made a treaty with an eagle.o
TEREUS:
Rest easy. All you need to do is eat
a certain root, and then you will be fledged.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Let’s go in, then.
(to Xanthias and Manodorus)
Xanthias, Manodorus,
take up our baggage.
(Xanthias and Manodorus pick up the baggage.)
CHORUS LEADER: (to Tereus)
670
Hoopoe, hey, you hear me?
TEREUS:
What do you want?
CHORUS LEADER:
You go to dine with them,
but please call out the nightingale for us,
the sweet-toned warbler in the Muses’ choir.
Let her come out so we can play with her.
PEISTHETAERUS:
I beg you, please agree to their desire.
Lead the chick out of the rushes.
EUELPIDES:
Yes,
by all the gods, bring out the nightingale,
so that we all can take a look at her.
TEREUS:
Your wish is my command.
(calling through the stage door)
O Procne, Procne,
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come meet these strangers who have come to visit.
(Procne enters through the stage door. She is wearing a bird mask with a beak.)
PEISTHETAERUS:
My goodness, what a gorgeous little bird!
How trim! How bright her plumage!
EUELPIDES:
Do you know
how badly I would like to part her thighs?
PEISTHETAERUS:
She’s gold all over, like a wealthy virgin!
EUELPIDES:
Oh, how I want to kiss her!
PEISTHETAERUS:
Idiot,
look at the two sharp ridges on her beak.
EUELPIDES:
I’d treat her like an egg. In just the same way
that we remove the shell before we eat
an egg, I’ll take her mask off,o then I’ll kiss her.
TEREUS:
Let’s go.
PEISTHETAERUS:
690
Lead on, and may success attend us.
(Peisthetaerus exits behind Tereus through the stage door. Xanthias, Manodorus, and Euelpides follow them inside.)
CHORUS: (to Procne)
Ah dear, dear bird, ah gorgeous thing,
ah musical companion,
you’ve come here to be seen;
you’ve come to bring me sweet,
sweet song.
Weaver of tunes in spring,
introduce with your fair-toned flute
anapests on the run.
CHORUS LEADER: (to the audience)
Insubstantial confections of clay, frail mortals, ephemeral featherless beings,
700
ineffectual weaklings who live in a dream and who perish like leaves, evanescent
generations of shadow, obscurities, listen to us who, ethereal, ageless
and immortal, have minds that consider perennial thoughts. We will teach you the business
of the sky, you will thoroughly fathom the nature of birds and the primal beginnings
of the gods and the rivers, of Chaos and Erebus. Thanks to us, even the famous
intellectual Prodicuso soon will be jealous of all you have learned.
First came Chaos,
Night next, the diffuseness of Erebus, then the voluminous Tartarus. There was
no earth, no air, no sky; but obscure-winged Night, at the very beginning,
in the limitless bosom of Erebus, laid a tempestuous egg. From the egg hatched,
when his term was attained, irresistible Eros, a god like impetuous whirlwinds,
710
who had glittering wings on his back. He had sex one night with opaque-winged Chaos
in immeasurable Tartarus. There he begat birdkind. He was first to lead us
to the sunlight. The race of immortals did not come about until later, when Eros
intermingled the cosmic ingredients. From his admixture of elements Heaven,
Sea, Earth, and the race of the deathless ones sprang into being. And so we are older
than the whole blest race of the gods.
That we birds are the offspring of Eros is proven
by innumerable proofs: We have wings and are often with lovers. Though beautiful young men
quite often have vowed to have nothing to do with the pleasures of sex until marriage,
they have opened their thighs through the power of us birds:o they have yielded to lovers who gave them quails, waterfowls, roosters and geese.
And we birds are the ones who bestow all
720
the significant blessings on mortals. For starters, we mark off, as seasons for humans,
fall, winter and spring. When the crane flies shrieking to Libya, then it is high time
to be sowing the fields, it is time for the helmsman to hang up his tiller and sleep in,
it is time for Orestes to weave new clothing,o so that he does not steal others’
on account of the cold. The return of the kite tells mortals that spring is returning
and the fleeces of sheep must be clipped. When the swallow is seen, all hasten to trade in
thick jackets for lighter attire.
We are Ammon to you, and Dodona and Delphi;
we are Phoebus Apollo. Before you attempt new ventures—a business transaction,
or the buying of produce, or marriage—you check with the birds, and you call all omens
of predestined events “birds.” Sneezes and words can be “birds”; providential encounters
730
can be “birds,” and mysterious rustlings, “birds.” “Birds” also are good-luck servants
and the brayings of donkeys. To you we are clearly the same as Apollo the Prophet.
If you regard us birds as gods,
we shall be seers for you and Muses,
and winds, and winter, and mild summer,
and hot summer. We shall never
run off and sit snobbily in the clouds
like Zeus but, ever present among you,
shall give to you yourselves, to your children
and your children’s children, wealth-healthiness,
740
prosperity, happiness, peace, youth,
good humor, choral dances and festivals
and bird’s milk. You’ll all be so well off
you could knock yourselves out with your blessings!
CHORUS:
Strophe
Country Muse of varied note,
I sing with you on mountain summits and in groves:
Tio tio tio tio tinx.
I pour out of my vibrant throat
music for Pan from the ash-tree leaves.
Tio tio tio tio tinx.
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With mighty choirs I sing a harmony
in praise of Mountain Mother Cybele.
To to to to to to to to to tinx.
Thence bee-like Phrynichuso
sips ambrosial melodies;
that’s why he can emit
song so sweet:
Tio tio tio tio tinx.
CHORUS LEADER:
If any of you audience members want to spend what’s left of life
pleasantly with us birds, then step right up. Believe me, all the actions
760
that lead to shame down here on earth are praiseworthy among the birds.
Though, for example, it is shameful here to beat your father, there
they praise whoever rushes at his papa, hits him and proclaims,
“Put up your spur if you are spoiling for a fight.” And if you are
a slave who runs away, gets caught again, then has his brow tattooed,o
there you would simply be a dappled francolin. And if you are
as much a Phrygian as Spintharus,o there you would be
a pigeon of Philemon’s dovecote. If, like Execestides,o
you are a Carian slave, go generate a pedigree up there,
and noble forebears will appear. Lastly, if Peisias’s son
770
decides to yield the gates to brigands, let him turn into a partridge,
an old cock’s fledgling, since such partridge tricks are fine among the birds.
Antistrophe
Thus do the swans, while gathered on
the Hebrus River’s banks,o sing Phoebus serenades:
Tio tio tio tio tinx.
They beat their wings in unison.
Their music shoots beyond the clouds.
Tio tio tio tio tinx.
They rouse the various tribes of animals.
The waves go tranquil as the clear wind falls.
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To to to to to to to to to tinx.
Olympus echoes the tune;
amazement grips the pantheon.
The Graces and Muses repeat
each cheerful note:
Tio tio tio tio tinx.
CHORUS LEADER:
Nothing is nicer or of greater use than sprouting wings. For starters,
let’s say a member of the audience is hungry and has gotten
tired of listening to tragic choruses. If he had wings,
he could just fly away, go home for lunch and come back full. Let’s say
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some Patrocleideso needs to take a dump. Rather than soil his cloak,
he could just fly away, let loose a few farts, catch his breath and land
back in his seat. Let’s say some one of you were an adulterer
and saw the husband of his mistress sitting in the front-row seats,
he could just fly away and fuck her good and then fly back again.
Being endowed with wings is, of all gifts, the most desirable.
Take Dieitrephes.o Though his wings were wine-jar handles, he was chosen
tribe chieftain, then commander of the cavalry and now, though he
began as nothing, he is thriving like a parti-colored cock-horse.o
(Peisthetaerus and Euelpides enter through the stage door. They are wearing wings and feathers.)
PEISTHETAERUS:
Well, here we are! I’ve never seen a sight
more comical.
EUELPIDES:
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What are you laughing at?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Those wings you got. Know what you look like most?
A goose some very cheap artiste has painted.
EUELPIDES:
And you’re just like a blackbird with a buzz cut.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Yes, we are tricked out like this, in the words
of Aeschylus,o “by no means due to others’,
but our own feathers.”
CHORUS LEADER:
What should we do now?
PEISTHETAERUS:
First, we should name our city something big
and grand, then give the gods a sacrifice.
EUELPIDES:
Yes, I agree with you.
CHORUS LEADER:
Well, alright then,
what should we call our city?
EUELPIDES:
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How about
the great Lacedaemonian name of “Sparta”?
PEISTHETAERUS:
No way! You think I’d call my city Sparta?
A hateful name! I’d never use esparto
twineo on my bed, though it were nothing more
than bands of reeds.
EUELPIDES:
What should we call it, then?
TEREUS:
A wispy sort of name, something suggestive
of clouds and airy spaces.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Do you like
Cloudcuckooland?
CHORUS LEADER:
I do, I do indeed!
You’ve found a great, great name, a handsome one.
EUELPIDES:
820
Cloudcuckooland—is that the city where
Theogenes keeps most of what he owns,
and Aeschines his whole estate?o
PEISTHETAERUS:
Not there,
but on the Plain of Phlegra where the gods
outdid the Giants in the Braggart War.o
CHORUS LEADER:
Oh, what a splendid city! But what god
should be our Keeper of the Citadel?
For what god should we weave the Sacred Robe?o
EUELPIDES:
Why not just choose Athena Polias?o
PEISTHETAERUS:
How can a city be controllable
830
when a woman deity stands armed
from head to foot, while Cleisthenes sits spinning
yarn from wool?o
EUELPIDES:
Which of the gods will guard
the city’s fortress, then?
TEREUS:
One of our brood,
the Persian Bird, who is regarded as
the most intimidating fowl of all,
a battle chick.
EUELPIDES:
O royal chick! You are
the perfect god to live among the rocks.
PEISTHETAERUS: (to Euelpides)
Take off into the air, now. Help the builders
working on the ramparts; bring them gravel,
840
strip down and mix the mortar; pass a trough
above your head; fall off the scaffolding;
post watchmen; keep the fire alive
beneath the embers; march around the boundaries,
bell in hand, and make your bed on-site.
Dispatch one messenger up to the gods,
one down to men, and then come back again.
EUELPIDES:
And you can stay right here and go to hell!
PEISTHETAERUS:
Go now, my friend, where I have sent you. Nothing
of what I’ve planned will be achieved without you.
850
As for myself, I need to give the gods,
the new bird gods, a sacrifice, so I
will go and find a priest to organize
the ceremony.
(Euelpides exits, stage left.)
(to Xanthias)
Hey there, slave! Hey, slave!
Bring out the basket and the lustral water.
CHORUS:
Strophe
All that you want, I want. What’s more,
I ask you please to send the gods on high
a powerful and solemn prayer.
Also, to thank them, sacrifice a sheep.
Let’s all send up a Pythian cry,o
860
and, while we sing, let Chaeriso play his pipe.
(The Piper comes out and plays. He is dressed as a raven.)
PEISTHETAERUS:
Enough of that. Egads! What’s this? I’ve seen
a lot of crazy things but never, what?,
a raven decked out like a piper.
(The Priest enters from stage right. Xanthias enters through the stage door holding a basket and leading a small, skinny goat. Manodorus enters carrying a basin of lustral water.)
Priest,
the time is now! Start making sacrifice
unto the new bird gods.
PRIEST:
I will begin,
but first, where’s the attendant with the basket?
(Xanthias holds the basket out for the Priest.)
Pray to the avian form of Hestia,
the kite who filches from altars,o and to all
the Olympian god- and goddess-birds . . .
PEISTHETAERUS:
870
O Hawk of Sunium, O Lord of Storks
PRIEST:
. . . to the Pythian and the Delian swan,
to Leto, the Mother of the Quails,
and the goldfinch goddess Artemis . . .
PEISTHETAERUS:
The “gold-tressed” Artemis is now a goldfinch.
PRIEST:
. . . and to Sabazius the Finch
and the Ostrich, Mother of Gods and Men . . .
PEISTHETAERUS:
Queen Cybele, Cleocritus’s mom!o
PRIEST:
. . . to grant security and health
to all Cloudcuckoolanders and Chians . . .
PEISTHETAERUS:
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Charming! The Chians always must be mentioned.
PRIEST:
. . . and to hero birds and the sons of heroes,
to porphyrions and pelicans,
to spoonbills and redbreasts, grouse and peacocks,
horned owls, teals, bitterns, herons, petrels,
figpeckers, of course, and tufted titmice . . .
PEISTHETAERUS:
Hey, go to hell, pal. Stop! Just stop! How big,
you moron, do you think the victim is
that you’re inviting eagles in, and vultures,
to have a portion of it? Don’t you see
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that goat’s so paltry that a single kite
could whisk the whole thing off. Get out of here,
both you and all your garlands. I myself
am going to perform the sacrifice.
(The Priest exits. The goat remains.)
CHORUS:
Antistrophe
To help you, we will sing a tune
fit for the pouring of the lustral water
and call the gods—well, only one,
because the victim will have to be shared
among us all, and what you’ve got here
is nothing more than goat horns and a beard.
PEISTHETAERUS:
900
Now, as we sacrifice, let us address
our prayers to the feathered gods above.
(The Poet enters, stage left. He has long hair and is wearing threadbare, ragged clothing.)
POET:
O Muse,
come use
your songs of praise
to recommend
our blest Cloudcuckooland!
PEISTHETAERUS:
Where did this come from? Tell me, who are you?
POET:
“The Muses’ willing slave
when I sing a song,
910
I have
a honey-tongue.”o
So Homer sang.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Oh really, you’re a slave? A longhair slave?o
POET:
“Each of us who excels in song
is the Muses’ fervent
servant.”
So Homer sang.
PEISTHETAERUS:
It’s no surprise, then, that your little cloak
is full of holes. But poet, why the heck
920
did you come traveling all the way up here?
POET:
In celebration of Cloudcuckooland
I’ve made a hundred gorgeous dithyrambs,
maiden-songs and Simonidean ditties.o
PEISTHETAERUS:
When did you make them, though? How long ago?
POET:
Oh, it’s been ages, ages now that I’ve
been writing songs in honor of this city.
PEISTHETAERUS:
But I’ve just started giving sacrifice
to celebrate its being ten days old.o
I only just now gave a name to it,
930
like parents do when they’ve a newborn baby.
POET:
“Swift are the Muses’ voices,
swift as the hooves of steeds. But you,
whose name is as revered as sacrifices,
founder of Aetna, father, please impart
whatever gift to me your generous heart
is willing to bestow.”o
PEISTHETAERUS: (to Xanthias and Manodorus)
This plague will drive us crazy. We had better
give him something to get rid of him.
(to Xanthias)
You there, you’ve got a jacket and a vest.
940
Take off the vest and hand it over to
this genius of a poet.
(giving the vest to the Poet)
Here you go.
It looks like you have got the chills all over.
POET:
Gratefully does my Muse
accept the boon you give.
Now let your mind receive,
in turn, what Pindaro says . . .
PEISTHETAERUS:
He just won’t go away and leave us be.
POET:
“Among the Scythian nomads, far from home,
wanders a man attired in nothing woven by a loom.
950
The man is sad
since he has nothing on
except an animal hide.”o
Do you get what I mean?
PEISTHETAERUS:
I understand you want the jacket, too.
(to Xanthias)
Take it off. We need to help the poet.
(offering the jacket to the Poet)
Alright, now, you come take it and be gone.
POET:
I’m off but, when I come back, I’ll compose
verses like this to celebrate your city:
“O Muse upon your golden throne,
960
come celebrate a cold and shivering town.
Through many-pathed, snow-blown
plains I have made my way.
Hurray!”
PEISTHETAERUS: (to the Poet)
Well, now that you have put that jacket on,
you sure must not be freezing any longer.
(The Poet exits, stage right.)
(to the audience)
There goes a problem I had not foreseen.
How did he find this town so soon?
(to Manodorus)
Boy, take
the lustral water, walk around the altar.
(Manodorus walks around the altar sprinkling water.)
Let ritual silence be maintained throughout!
(The Oracle Collector enters from stage left. He is carrying a book under one arm.)
ORACLE COLLECTOR:
Don’t sacrifice that goat.
PEISTHETAERUS:
970
And who are you?
ORACLE COLLECTOR:
Me, I’m an oracle collector.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Screw off.
ORACLE COLLECTOR:
It’s dangerous to mock religious matters.
Look here, there is an oracle of Baciso
clearly referring to Cloudcuckooland.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Why didn’t you divulge these words before
I set about establishing a city?
ORACLE COLLECTOR:
Religiosity prevented me.
PEISTHETAERUS:
I guess I’d better hear the words themselves:
ORACLE COLLECTOR: (reading from the book)
“But when the wolves and grizzled ravens share
980
the same abode twixt Sicyon and Corinth . . .”o
PEISTHETAERUS:
But what does “Corinth” have to do with me?
ORACLE COLLECTOR:
By “Corinth” Bacis clearly means the sky:
“First sacrifice a white ram to the Earth,
then to whoever first interprets me
provide a gleaming cloak and fresh-made sandals—
PEISTHETAERUS:
“Sandals” are really in there?
ORACLE COLLECTOR: (offering Peisthetaerus the book)
Here’s the book.
(continuing to read)
“. . . give him the goblet, fill his hands with entrails—
PEISTHETAERUS:
“His hands with entrails,” really?
ORACLE COLLECTOR:
Here’s the book.
(continuing to read)
“. . . If, pious youth, you do as here is written,
990
you will become an eagle in the clouds.
If you refuse, you will become not even
a turtledove, nor rock thrush, nor woodpecker.”
PEISTHETAERUS:
All that is really in there?
ORACLE COLLECTOR:
Here’s the book.
PEISTHETAERUS:
That oracle is nothing to the one
Apollo gave me.o Look, I wrote it down:
(reading from a book)
“And when a shyster shows up uninvited,
disturbs the sacrifice and asks for entrails,
then you must jab at him betwixt the ribs—
ORACLE COLLECTOR:
You’re only joking with me.
PEISTHETAERUS: (offering the book to the Oracle Collector)
Here’s the book.
1000
“. . . and spare no eagle in the clouds, not even
Lampon or the lordly Diopeithes.”o
ORACLE COLLECTOR:
Those words are really in there?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Here’s the book.
(hitting the Oracle Collector with the book)
Get lost, now! Go to hell!
ORACLE COLLECTOR:
Ouch! Ow! Oh my!
(The Oracle Collector runs off, stage left.)
PEISTHETAERUS:
Go somewhere else and sell your oracles!
(Metono enters from stage right, carrying various rulers and wearing high leather boots.)
METON:
I’ve come to you—
PEISTHETAERUS: (aside)
And here’s a new annoyance.
(to Meton)
What have you come to us to do? Your plan,
what shape is it? What sort of grand idea
is now en route? What buskin is strutting in?
METON:
I want to measure out the air for you
and separate it into acres.
PEISTHETAERUS:
1010
Goodness,
who in the world are you?
METON:
Who am I?
Meton, a man whose name resounds through Greece,
and all Colonus too.o
PEISTHETAERUS: (pointing to the equipment)
What’s this equipment?
METON:
Rulers for measuring the air. You see,
the sky in its entirety is like
a rounded shell for baking. So, by laying
this rounded ruler over it and sticking
a compass in it . . . Do you catch my drift?
PEISTHETAERUS:
I don’t.
METON:
. . . and laying out this level ruler
1020
along the side, I’ll take a measurement,
so that you’ll end up with a circle squared.
There’ll be a market in the middle of it,
and all these straight streets running toward that market’ll
come together at the very center
and look like beams of starlight emanating
in all directions from a star that’s round.
PEISTHETAERUS:
This guy’s a Thales.o Meton . . .
METON:
Yes, what is it?
PEISTHETAERUS:
. . . because we’re pals, I’ll give you this advice:
Get out of here.
METON:
What’s wrong?
PEISTHETAERUS:
It’s like in Sparta:
1030
they’re driving out the foreigners, and fists
are flying frequently throughout the city.o
METON:
Is there a civil war here?
PEISTHETAERUS:
No, not that.
METON:
What, then?
PEISTHETAERUS:
We have resolved, unanimously,
to beat up all the frauds.
METON:
I’d best be going.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Yes, but I doubt that you’ll escape in time.
Those fists I warned you of are near at hand.
(Peisthetaerus punches Meton.)
METON:
Oh miserable me!
PEISTHETAERUS:
But I’ve been trying
to get this message through since you arrived:
Get lost! Go use those rulers on yourself!
(Meton runs off, stage right. The Inspector enters, stage left. He is carrying two ballot boxes.)
INSPECTOR:
Where is the legislative body?
PEISTHETAERUS:
1040
Who’s this
Sardanapallus?o
INSPECTOR:
I’ve come from Athens
as the Inspector to Cloudcuckooland.
PEISTHETAERUS:
“Inspector,” huh? Who sent you out to us?
INSPECTOR:
Teleaso did. He passed a bill for it.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Hey, wouldn’t you prefer to take your fee
and just get out instead of making trouble?
INSPECTOR:
Sounds good to me. I should be back in Athens
speaking to the Assembly, since I’m taking
care of some business for Pharnaces.o
PEISTHETAERUS:
1050
Good, take your pay and vanish. Here it is!
(Peisthetaerus punches the Inspector.)
INSPECTOR:
Hey, what was that?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Assembly business for
Pharnaces.
INSPECTOR:
Witnesses! I, an inspector,
am being beaten up!
(The Inspector runs off, stage left.)
PEISTHETAERUS: (to the Inspector)
Get lost and take
your ballot boxes with you!
(to the audience)
This is awful.
Inspectors have already been dispatched
to us before we’ve even had the chance
to give our founding offerings to the gods.
(The Decree Seller enters, stage right. He is carrying a number of scrolls and is reading from one of them.)
DECREE SELLER:
“If a Cloudcuckoolander harms a man
of Athens—
PEISTHETAERUS:
What is that vile piece of writing?
DECREE SELLER:
1060
I am a vendor of decrees, and I
have come to sell your settlement new laws.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Like what?
DECREE SELLER:
“The people of Cloudcuckooland
must use the same law code and weights and measures
the Olophyxianso use.”
PEISTHETAERUS:
All that I’m fixing
to use is fists on you!
(Peisthetaerus punches the Decree Seller.)
DECREE SELLER:
Hey, what’s your problem?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Take your decrees away, or else I’ll show you
some very stringent laws indeed.
(The Decree Seller retreats upstage. The Inspector reenters from stage left.)
INSPECTOR:
I summon
Peisthetaerus to appear in court
for hubris in the month Munychium.o
PEISTHETAERUS:
Really? You’re back again?
DECREE SELLER:
1070
“And if a man
expels court officers and fails to hear them
according to the terms of the decree—
PEISTHETAERUS:
I’m cursed it seems. Are you still here as well?
INSPECTOR:
I’ll ruin you, I’ll sue you for ten thousand
drachmas!
PEISTHETAERUS:
And I’ll smash both your ballot boxes!
(The Inspector runs off, stage left.)
DECREE SELLER:
Do you remember when you used to shit
on law codes in the evening?o
PEISTHETAERUS: (to Xanthias and Manodorus)
Please, somebody
grab ahold of him.
(to the Decree Seller, who runs off, stage right)
Won’t you stand still?
(to Xanthias and Manodorus)
Quick now, let’s go inside and sacrifice
1080
this goat and give him to the gods in there.
(Peisthetaerus exits, with Xanthias, Manodorus, and the goat, through the stage door.)
CHORUS:
Strophe
All humankind henceforth
will honor me with hymns and offerings.
All-powerful, surveyor of all things,
I keep watch over all the earth.
I safeguard crops by snapping up those breeds
of insects that, with greedy jaws,
devour the fruit that plumps in pods
and flourishes on trees.
I slay those who debase
1090
sweet-smelling gardens with impurities.
Under the violence of my wings
destruction falls on all that bites and stings.
CHORUS LEADER: (addressing the audience)
Today’s the day we hear the following especially proclaimed:
“Whoever kills Diagoras of Meloso will receive a talent.”
Also, “Whoever kills a long-dead tyrant will receive a talent.”
Well now, we want to make our own announcement: “He who kills
Philocrates of Sparrowtowno will get a talent. If you catch him
and bring him in alive, you’ll get four talents. Why? Philocrates,
you see, runs spits through finches and then sells them seven for an obol.
1100
He tortures thrushes by inflating them with air so they look bigger,
and he plucks blackbirds and sticks the feathers in their nostrils,
and he catches pigeons, cages them and makes them serve in nets
as bait.” So runs the proclamation that we want to make to you.
What’s more, if you keep birds in cages in your courtyard, we demand
they be released at once. All those who fail to do so will be caught
by birds and bound with rope and forced to play the decoy in their turn.
CHORUS:
Antistrophe
Happy our feathered race
that in the winter needs no woolen clothes,
nor do the summer sun’s extended rays
1110
with roasting swelter torment us.
At noontime when the crazed cicada heaves
shrill hymns into the air, I roost
among the flowers and leaves
that fill the meadow’s breast.
All winter in a cave
we revel with the nymphs. In spring we have
pure myrtle berries in their white
blossoms, we have the Graces’ garden fruit.
CHORUS LEADER: (to the audience)
I want to speak now to the judgeso there about the prize in question.
1120
If they vote for us, we will bestow more gifts by far upon them
than Paris took in. First, the owls from Laurium,o which every judge
covets above all else, will never fly away and leave you—no,
they’ll settle in your house, roost in your money bags and breed small change.
What’s more, you’ll live in houses that resemble temples, since we’ll peak them
with eagle gables. Plus, if you get picked for some official post
and want to pilfer money, we’ll endow you with the hawk’s sharp talons.
When you go out to dine in town, we’ll send you off with boundless stomachs.
However, if you vote against us, well, you’d better have yourselves
fitted for copper coverings, like statues.o Otherwise, whenever
1130
you have a white robe on, you’ll pay by getting shat on by the birds!
(Peisthetaerus enters through the stage door, followed by Xanthias and Manodorus.)
PEISTHETAERUS:
The sacrifice, dear birds, was favorable.
But where’s the messenger who should have come
to give us a report on wall construction?
Ah yes, here comes the fellow on the double,
all out of breath like an Olympic sprinter.
(The First Messenger enters, running, from stage left.)
FIRST MESSENGER: (panting)
Where—where is—where—where—where is—where—where—where—where is
our leader Peisthetaerus?
PEISTHETAERUS:
I’m right here.
FIRST MESSENGER:
Your wall has been constructed.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Excellent!
FIRST MESSENGER:
A most magnificent and beautiful
1140
accomplishment! The top is so expansive
that Proxenides of Blusterburg
and Theogeneso could each hitch up
a chariot to horses as gigantic
as the Trojan oneo and still have room
enough to pass each other when they met.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Truly remarkable!
FIRST MESSENGER:
As for its height,
I measured it myself: six hundred feet.
PEISTHETAERUS:
That’s quite a height! Who built it up so tall?
FIRST MESSENGER:
Birds did it, birds. No brickmaker from Egypt,
1150
no carpenter, no mason, only birds.
It was astounding: thirty thousand cranes
swallowed foundation stones in Libya
and flew them in, and corncrakes used their beaks
to shape the blocks. Ten thousand storks made bricks
while curlews and the other river birds
kept hauling water through the air to them.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Who brought the mortar?
FIRST MESSENGER:
Herons did, in hods.
PEISTHETAERUS:
How did they get the mortar in the hods?
FIRST MESSENGER:
A truly brilliant method was invented!
1160
It was the geese—they used their feet like shovels
to scoop the mortar up and drop it in
the heron’s hods.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Indeed, what can’t feet do?
FIRST MESSENGER:
And there were all the ducks, with aprons on,
laying bricks. And swallows flew to help
with mortar in their mouths and trowels strapped
like children to their backs.
PEISTHETAERUS: (to the audience)
Why do we pay for
construction workers?
(to the First Messenger)
Hmm, now. Tell me also.
Who did the woodwork?
FIRST MESSENGER:
It was birds again,
this time those rather clever carpenters,
1170
the woodpeckers. They used their beaks like axes
to square the gates. The ruckus of their chopping
evoked a shipyard. All the gateways now
have gates and bolts, and there are guards around them,
and bell ringers are ready with alarms,
and signal fires are waiting in the towers.
Me, I am heading off to take a bath now.
You can attend to all the rest yourself.
(The First Messenger exits, stage right.)
CHORUS LEADER:
You there, what’s wrong with you? Are you astounded
because the wall was built so speedily?
PEISTHETAERUS:
1180
Yes, by the gods, I am, and so I should be:
that sounded like a fairy tale. But look,
here comes a sentry from the wall with news,
no doubt. He looks just like a battle dancer.o
(The Second Messenger enters, running, from stage right.)
SECOND MESSENGER:
Red alert! Red alert! Red alert!
PEISTHETAERUS:
What’s going on?
SECOND MESSENGER:
A great emergency!
One of the deities attached to Zeus
has flown in through a gate and violated
our airspace. Somehow he escaped the notice
of all the jays, our daytime sentinels.
PEISTHETAERUS:
1190
A terrible misdeed, and quite illegal!
Which of the gods has done it?
SECOND MESSENGER:
We don’t know.
All that we know for sure is: he has wings.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Shouldn’t you have dispatched the border guard
against him right away?
SECOND MESSENGER:
Three thousand hawks,
our mounted archers, have been mobilized,
and every bird with claws has gone with them—
vulture and buzzard, eagle, owl and kestrel.
The air is quivering beneath the rush
and rummage of their wings as they pursue
1200
the god that must be somewhere near at hand,
oh yes, quite close to us.
PEISTHETAERUS:
To arms! To arms!
Take up your slings and bows! Move in, reservists!
Shoot! Pummel! Someone, arm me with a sling!
CHORUS:
Strophe
A war is breaking out between us and the gods,
a war beyond description. Come, now, everyone,
guard Erebus’s son, the Air,o the region girt with clouds.
Make sure that no divinity sneaks in.
CHORUS LEADER:
All of you, everywhere, look out—I hear
the god’s wings whirring in the air nearby.
(Iris enters, winged, suspended from the stage crane.)
PEISTHETAERUS: (to Iris)
1210
Hey, woman, where, where, where you flying to?
Halt there! Stand still! Stop darting to and fro!
Who are you, and from where? You’d better tell me
where you’ve come from.
IRIS:
I have flown down here
from the abode of the Olympian gods.
PEISTHETAERUS:
And what’s your name? The Salaminia?
The Paralus?o
IRIS:
I am the Speedy Iris.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Boat or dog?
IRIS:
What do you mean by that?
PEISTHETAERUS: (to the Chorus)
One of you buzzards, fly up there and grab her!
IRIS:
“Grab me”? What do you mean by all these insults?
PEISTHETAERUS:
You’re gonna get it!
IRIS:
1220
How unprecedented!
PEISTHETAERUS:
Which gateway did you use to penetrate
our walls, you whore?
IRIS:
Which gateway? No idea.
PEISTHETAERUS: (to the Chorus)
Do you hear her voice, how insolent
she is?
(to Iris)
Did you present yourself before
the Sergeants of the Jays?
IRIS:
I’m sorry—what?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Do you have a passport that the storks
have stamped?
IRIS:
What is this nonsense?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Do you have one?
IRIS:
Are you insane?
PEISTHETAERUS:
And no official bird
was present to approve a visa for you?
IRIS:
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No, no one has approved a visa for me,
you idiot.
PEISTHETAERUS:
So you have stolen passage
through air into a city not your own?
IRIS:
What other roads are gods supposed to fly on?
PEISTHETAERUS:
That’s not my problem, but they won’t be flying
through here. In fact, you’re here illegally
and, if you were to get what you’ve got coming,
there is no other Iris more deserving
of summary arrest and execution.
IRIS:
But I’m immortal.
PEISTHETAERUS:
You’d be executed
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all the same. The way I see it, we’d
be in a bad position if we birds
were in command here and you gods continued
acting out and failing to accept
you must submit to your superiors
now that your time has passed. So go on, tell me:
Where are you flying with those wings of yours?
IRIS:
I am a messenger of Zeus en route
to order men to offer, at their altars,
oxen and sheep to the Olympian gods
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and fill the streets with smoke of sacrifice.
PEISTHETAERUS:
What gods are you referring to?
IRIS:
What gods?
Why, us, of course, the gods up in the sky.
PEISTHETAERUS:
You all are gods?
IRIS:
What other gods are out there?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Birds now are the humans’ gods, so humans
must offer sacrifice to birds and not,
by Zeus, to Zeus.
IRIS:
You fool! You fool! Don’t rouse
the gods’ dread violence against yourself,
lest Justice, armed with Zeus’s spade, root out,
entirely, the race of aviankind,
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lest lightning smite you with Licymnian force,o
burn up your person, melt your porticoes!
PEISTHETAERUS:
Now you listen. Stop your threatening.
Just stand there without moving. Did you think
I was some Lydian or Phrygiano
you could intimidate with big, loud words?
You need to know that, if Zeus troubles me
again, I will incinerate his palace
and Amphion’s, too,o with fire-breathing eagles.
I shall deploy against him in the sky
1270
porphyrions, more than six hundred of them,
all clad in leopard’s skins. (And in the past
just one Porphyriono gave Zeus a lot
of trouble.) As for you, his messenger,
the “goddess” Iris, if you make me angry,
I’ll push your thighs apart and screw you good.
You’ll marvel that a geezer like myself
can keep it up for three successive rammings!
IRIS:
Die, wretch, along with your obscenities!
PEISTHETAERUS:
Get out of here, and quickly. Scat, girl, scat!
IRIS:
1280
My father Zeus, I swear, will put an end
to your aggression!
PEISTHETAERUS: (sarcastically)
Oh, I’m really scared!
(sincerely)
Why don’t you fly off somewhere else and frighten
some younger person with your talk of lightning?
(Iris flies off on the stage crane.)
CHORUS:
Antistrophe
We have forbidden all the gods derived from Zeus
any further passage through our town. No more
shall human beings send the savory smoke of sacrifice
upward to heaven this way through the air.
PEISTHETAERUS:
I can’t stop worrying about the herald
I sent to humankind. What if he never
comes back again?
(The First Herald enters from stage left. He is carrying a golden crown.)
FIRST HERALD:
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Hail, blessed Peisthetaerus!
O most wise, most distinguished . . . O most wise,
most cunning, triply happy . . . O most . . . break in
anytime.
PEISTHETAERUS:
What do you have to say?
FIRST HERALD:
In honor of your wisdom all the people
want to bestow this golden crown upon you.
(The First Herald puts the crown on Peisthetaerus’s head.)
PEISTHETAERUS:
I welcome it. But why give me this honor?
FIRST HERALD:
O founder of this most illustrious city
set in the air, do you not realize
in what esteem men hold you and how many
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now can be called adorers of this land?
Before you built this city, everyone
was mad for all things Spartan.o People grew
their hair out long and fasted, never bathed,
behaved like Socrates and went around
with walking sticks,o but now the fad has changed,
and they are mad for all things avian.
They take delight in copying whatever
we birds do.
To start with, right at dawn,
like birds, they all get out of bed and then go scratch
1310
around for legal cases. Then they go
and hone their bills among the civic archives.
So glaring is their avian craziness
that many of them have assumed bird names.
There is a barkeep with a limp who goes by
“the Partridge,” and Menippuso calls himself
“the Swallow,” and one-eyed Opuntius,o
“the Crow.” Their “Lark” is Philocles;o their “Fox-Goose”
Theogenes. Lycurguso is “the Ibis,”
and Chaerephono “the Bat.” “The Magpie” is
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this guy named Syracosius;o “the Quail,”
Midiaso (who, one must admit, resembles
a quail hit on the noggin by a finger).o
Ornithophiliacs, they won’t stop singing
songs with swallows in them and with teals
in them and geese and pigeons, or with feathers
in them or at least a bit of fluff.
That is the situation down on earth.
There’s one more thing that I should tell you: people
are coming here, more than ten thousand of them,
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to ask for feathers and a raptor’s talons,
and you will have to find a good supply
of wings to outfit all the immigrants.
PEISTHETAERUS: (to Xanthias and Manodorus)
Now listen up: we should stop wasting time.
Fill all those bags and baskets to the rim
with wings.
(to Manodorus)
Manes, you carry them to me
outside the nest, and I’ll be there to welcome
everyone who comes to live with us.
(Xanthias and Manodorus exit through a stage door.)
CHORUS:
Soon some human immigrant
will come to make this settlement
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even more populous.
PEISTHETAERUS:
With any luck!
CHORUS:
The urge to settle here is everywhere!
(Throughout this scene, Manodorus exits and enters through stage door carrying baskets full of wings.)
PEISTHETAERUS: (to Manodorus)
Bring in those wings, now. Quick, be quick.
CHORUS:
All that an immigrant might want
we’ve got in stock:
Ambrosia, Graces, Smarts, Desire
and kind Tranquillity’s sweet face.
PEISTHETAERUS: (to Manodorus)
Hurry up there! You lazy clod!
CHORUS: (to Manodorus)
Quick, now, we need some wings outside!
(to Peisthetaerus)
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Tell him again to hurry up.
PEISTHETAERUS: (striking Manodorus)
I will, by beating him like this!
CHORUS:
Oh, he is slow, slow, slow, slow as an ass.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Manes is a waste of space!
CHORUS:
First you must group
these wings according to their type:
the musical go here; the prophetic, there;
the naval, here, and then be sure
you accurately gauge
the man you fledge.
PEISTHETAERUS: (to Manodorus)
1360
Oh, by the kestrels you
are going to catch it now!
How very slow you are!
(Xanthias and Manodorus have assembled a large pile of wings and placed a whip beside it and a stool. The Father-Beater enters, singing, from stage right.)
FATHER-BEATER:
I wish I were an eagle and could fly
high in the sky
above the azure motion
of the barren ocean!
PEISTHETAERUS:
It seems the messenger has given me
no false report. Here comes a person singing
a song of eagles.
FATHER-BEATER:
Oh my, my. There’s nothing
1370
sweeter than flight. Oh yes, I’m mad for birds.
I want to fly up, make my nest among you
and live according to your laws.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Which laws?
The birds have many laws.
FATHER-BEATER:
Well, all your laws.
Especially the one that says it’s noble
both to strangle and to peck one’s father.
PEISTHETAERUS:
We do indeed regard a younger bird
who’s beaten up his dad as rather manly.
FATHER-BEATER:
That’s why I want to nest here—so that I
can break my father’s neck and seize his wealth.
PEISTHETAERUS:
1380
But there is also this quite ancient law
inscribed upon the Tablet of the Storks:
“After the father stork has reared his storklings
and taught them how to fly, the storklings must,
in turn, support their father.”
FATHER-BEATER:
What a waste
it’s been for me to travel all this way,
since here I’d even have to feed my father.
PEISTHETAERUS:
No, not a waste. My friend, since you have come here
so proactively, I want to fit you
with wings as if you were an orphan bird.
1390
What’s more, young man, I’m going to pass along
some good advice that I myself received
when I was just a lad: Don’t beat your father.
Now take these wings in one hand; in the other
take these spurs and then, regarding this
here as a cockscomb on your head, go serve
as sentry or as soldier. Make your way
by working. Let your father live his life out.
Since you are keen to fight, fly off to Thrace
and do your fighting there.
FATHER-BEATER:
What sound advice!
I’ll act on it.
PEISTHETAERUS:
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You would be wise to do so.
(The Father-Beater exits, stage left. Cinesiaso enters, singing, from stage right.)
CINESIAS:
“I flutter to Olympus on ethereal wings.
I fly, now here, now there, on roads of songs . . .”
PEISTHETAERUS:
He’s gonna need a whole boatload of wings.
CINESIAS:
“. . . seeking a new route
with fearless body, fearless thought . . .”
PEISTHETAERUS:
Greetings, Cinesias, you rail! Why have
you whirled your lame leg round and wound up here?
CINESIAS:
“. . . I wish I were a fowl,
a tuneful nightingale . . .”
PEISTHETAERUS:
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Stop singing and just tell me what you want.
CINESIAS:
Wing me, and I will fly into the aether
and gather novel preludes from the airborne,
snow-like exhalations of the clouds.
PEISTHETAERUS:
You want to gather preludes from the clouds?
CINESIAS:
A poet’s whole craft hangs upon the clouds!
A dithyramb’s most striking parts are airy
and misty, darkly bright and flighty.
Just listen, and you’ll understand . . .
PEISTHETAERUS:
No thanks.
CINESIAS:
By Heracles you simply must! Here now,
I’ll sing this one for you from start to finish:
1420
“O dreams of feathered beings who cleave the aether,
long-necked, together . . .”
PEISTHETAERUS:
Whoa now.
CINESIAS:
“Borne on the breath of a gale,
I soar above the ocean swell . . .”
PEISTHETAERUS:
Believe you me, I’ll stop your breath for good!
CINESIAS:
“. . . Now traveling in the regions where
the South wind issues forth,
now bringing my body near the North,
1430
cleaving a harborless furrow of air . . .”
(Peisthetaerus lashes Cinesias with pairs of wings.)
You coot, that is a charming trick indeed!
PEISTHETAERUS:
Don’t you get off on being wing-propelled?
CINESIAS:
To treat me thus, the dithyrambic poet
for whom the various tribes will not stop fighting!
PEISTHETAERUS: (sarcastically)
Oh please, please reside with us and teach
Leotrophideso choral songs for flocks
of flying corncrakes!
CINESIAS:
You are mocking me,
that’s clear. Regardless, I shall not relent
until I get my wings and climb the air!
(Cinesias exits, stage right. The Informer enters, singing, from stage left. He is wearing a tattered cloak.)
INFORMER:
1440
“Who are these dappled birds that look like transients?
O long-winged swallows, subtle ones!”
PEISTHETAERUS:
My goodness, this is no small infestation
that threatens us. Here comes another warbler.
INFORMER:
Again I sing: “O long-winged subtle ones!”
PEISTHETAERUS:
He’s singing to his cloak. That thing needs more
than just a couple swallows.o
INFORMER:
Where’s the man
that hands out wings to everyone who comes here?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Right here. But you must tell me why you want them.
INFORMER:
It’s wings I want and wings that I must have.
1450
Don’t make me ask for them a second time.
PEISTHETAERUS:
What, do you want to fly off to Pellene?o
INFORMER:
Not there. I am a server of subpoenas
who trolls the islands, an informer and . . .
PEISTHETAERUS:
What glorious work you do!
INFORMER:
. . . a sniffer-out
of lawsuits. And I need a pair of wings
to fly to island states and serve subpoenas.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Would wingpower help you better serve subpoenas?
INFORMER:
No, but that way the pirates couldn’t get me.
I could return to Athens with the cranes,
1460
once I had loaded up with tons of lawsuits
as ballast.
PEISTHETAERUS:
That’s the way you make your living?
Though you are a hale and hearty youngster,
you inform on foreigners?
INFORMER:
Why not?
I mean, I don’t know how to use a shovel.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Surely there must be nobler types of work
from which so big a man could make an honest
living instead of pettifogging lawsuits.
INFORMER:
Buddy, don’t nag me. I just want my wings.
PEISTHETAERUS:
And I will give you wings by talking to you.
INFORMER:
1470
How can mere words fit someone out with wings?
PEISTHETAERUS:
It’s words, you see, that set us all aflutter.
INFORMER:
All of us?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Have you never heard boys’ fathers
in barbershops complaining, for example,
“It’s terrible how Dieitrephes’s words
have set my son aflutter to be racing
horses!” and then another of them says,
“My son is all aflutter to be writing
tragedies. His wits have up and flown
out of his head!”
INFORMER:
So they get wings from words?
PEISTHETAERUS:
1480
They do indeed. Words elevate the mind
and move the man. And so I hope to use
these beneficial words to set you all
aflutter for a better line of work.
INFORMER:
But I don’t want one.
PEISTHETAERUS:
What, then, will you do?
INFORMER:
I won’t disgrace my family name. Informing
has been our business since my great-grandfather’s time.
So, quick, now, fit me out with light and speedy
hawk or kestrel wings, so that I can
subpoena foreigners, obtain a judgment
1490
in Athens, then fly back out to the islands.
PEISTHETAERUS:
I see. That way the foreigner will lose
his case before he even reaches Athens.
INFORMER:
That’s right.
PEISTHETAERUS:
And while he’s on his way to Athens,
you’ll be flying back out to the islands
to grab his property.
INFORMER:
You’ve got it all, now.
I’ll have to zip from one place to another
as swiftly as a top.
PEISTHETAERUS:
“A top”—I see.
(picking up the whip)
Well, by chance I’ve got some rather handsome
Corcyrean wingso right here beside me.
How do you like them?
INFORMER:
1500
Oh no, that’s a whip!
PEISTHETAERUS:
Nope, it’s a pair of wings. I’m going to use them
to make you zip as swiftly as a top.
INFORMER:
Oh no!
(The Informer exits, running, stage left.)
PEISTHETAERUS:
Won’t you go “flying” out of here?
Git, now, you goddamn good-for-nothing, git!
I’ll treat you to some shyster double-dealing!
(to Xanthias and Manodorus)
You two, collect the wings and come with me.
(Peisthetaerus, Xanthias, and Manodorus exit through the stage door with the baskets full of wings.)
CHORUS:
Strophe
In my ethereal flights I have seen
many amazing novelties:
there is a tree near Cowardtown,
1510
a strange tree called Cleonymus.o
It has no heartwood. A useless thing,
voluminous, with a yellow rind,
it spouts perjuries every spring
and in fall sheds shields on the ground.
Antistrophe
Then there’s a land at the edge of creation,
a lampless waste, where people meet
the great heroes for conversation
and banqueting, but not at night—
that’s when it’s dangerous to be there
1520
because, if someone ran into
Orestes,o he’d be stripped down bare
and beaten from top to toe.
(Peisthetaerus enters through the stage door. Prometheus enters from stage left, masked and carrying a parasol.)
PROMETHEUS:
Oh no, oh no! I hope that Zeus won’t see me!
Where’s Peisthetaerus?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Whoa, what’s this? A masked man?
PROMETHEUS:
Do you see any of the gods behind me?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Nope, none of them are back there. Who are you?
PROMETHEUS:
What time is it?
PEISTHETAERUS:
What time? Just after midday.
Who are you?
PROMETHEUS:
Time to loose the oxen? Later?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Ah, this is nauseating!
PROMETHEUS:
What’s Zeus doing?
1530
Breaking the clouds up or collecting them?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Screw off!
PROMETHEUS:
Alright, then, I’ll unmask myself.
(Prometheus removes his mask.)
PEISTHETAERUS:
Prometheus my friend!
PROMETHEUS:
Hush, now. Don’t shout.
PEISTHETAERUS:
What’s wrong?
PROMETHEUS:
Hush, hush. Don’t say my name out loud.
If Zeus finds out I’m here, I’ll be a dead man.
Alright, I’m going to tell you everything
that’s happening up in the sky, but take
this parasol and shield my head with it
so that the gods don’t see me from above.
(Prometheus hands Peisthetaerus the parasol.)
PEISTHETAERUS:
A very clever plan! How Promethean!
(holding up the parasol)
1540
Quick, hide in here, and speak with confidence.
PROMETHEUS:
Now hear this . . .
PEISTHETAERUS:
I’m listening, continue.
PROMETHEUS:
Zeus is beaten.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Beaten? But since when?
PROMETHEUS:
Ever since you established this encampment
here in the air. Since then no man has offered
sacrifice to the gods; the smoke from victims’
thighbones no longer makes its way to us.
Without burnt offerings we may as well
be fasting at the Thesmophoria!o
All the barbarian gods have grown so hungry
1550
that they are screaming like Illyrianso
and threatening to descend in arms on Zeus,
if he does not reopen all the markets.
so that they can import their fill of tripe.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Wait, there are other savage gods that live
beyond you?
PROMETHEUS:
Yes, of course there are. Where else
would Execestides’s forebearso have found
a deity to worship?
PEISTHETAERUS:
What’s the name
of these barbaric gods?
PROMETHEUS:
Triballians.
PEISTHETAERUS:
I see—“Triballian” must be the word
that “tribbing” comes from.o
PROMETHEUS:
Yes, that’s very likely.
1560
One thing is clear: ambassadors will soon
come here from Zeus and the Triballians
beyond him to negotiate a treaty.
Don’t you agree to anything till Zeus
returns his scepter to the birds and gives you
Princess to be your wife.
PEISTHETAERUS:
But who is this “Princess”?
PROMETHEUS:
A gorgeous girl who guards the thunderbolts
of Zeus and keeps such things as prudent counsel,
self-restraint, civility, shipyards,
1570
disparagement, paychecks, three-obol fees.
PEISTHETAERUS:
She watches over all those things?
PROMETHEUS:
She does.
Get her as wife, and you’ll have everything.
That’s why I came—to give you this advice.
I’ve always been a friend to humankind.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Yes, it’s because of you and you alone
that we get barbecues.o
PROMETHEUS:
I hate the gods,
as you well know.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Yes, you were born to hate them.
You are a perfect Timon.o
PROMETHEUS:
Here, going,
so give me back my parasol so that,
1580
if Zeus does see me from above, I’ll seem
to be a butler for a basket-bearer.o
PEISTHETAERUS:
And take as well this stool for her to sit on.
(Peisthetaerus hands Prometheus the stool. Prometheus exits, stage left, holding the opened parasol over his head with one hand and the stool in the other. Peisthetaerus exits through the stage door.)
CHORUS:
Strophe
Out in the land of Shadefoots there’s a fen
where dirty Socrates calls up the souls of men.
Pisandero came there one day to retrieve
the spirit he’d abandoned when alive.
He brought a baby camel, slit its throat
and took a step back like Odysseus.o
Up from the depths came Chaerephono the Bat,
1590
conjured by that blood sacrifice.
(Poseidon, Heracles, and the Triballian enter from stage left.)
POSEIDON:
Now you can see Cloudcuckooland before you—
that’s where we’re headed as ambassadors.
(to the Triballian)
Hey you, look what you’ve done. You’ve draped your cloak
from right to left. Why not the other way
from left to right? You moron, do you think
you are Laespodias?o Democracy,
what have you come to, if the gods can choose
this person as ambassador? Keep still, now,
dammit. You are by far the most barbaric
1600
divinity that I have ever seen.
(to Heracles)
Heracles, what should we be doing here?
HERACLES:
You know my mind—we should be strangling
the guy who’s walled us gods off from the air.
POSEIDON:
Sorry, my friend. We’re here as diplomats;
our job is to negotiate a treaty.
HERACLES:
That just makes me want to strangle him
a second time.
(Peisthetaerus enters through the stage door. He is attended by Xanthias and Manodorus, who carry out a barbecue grill.)
PEISTHETAERUS: (to Xanthias and Manodorus)
Cheese grater, please. Now pass
the silphium.o Somebody bring the cheese in,
and, you there, stir those coals.
POSEIDON: (to Peisthetaerus)
We three, as gods,
greet you, a mortal man.
PEISTHETAERUS:
1610
Hold on a sec;
I’m grating silphium.
HERACLES:
What are these meats?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Fowls that have been condemned to death for raising
a coup against the bird-democracy.
HERACLES:
And you will season them with silphium
before you answer us?
PEISTHETAERUS: (as if seeing Heracles for the first time)
Oh, Heracles,
hello. What’s that you said?
POSEIDON:
The gods have sent us
to you as diplomats to sue for peace.
PEISTHETAERUS: (to Xanthias)
This flask has no more oil in it.
HERACLES:
The fowls,
of course, must be completely drenched in oil.
POSEIDON:
1620
We gods are gaining nothing from this conflict.
As for you, by being friends with us,
you would obtain rainwater for your pools
and endless halcyon weather to enjoy.
On just these terms we have been granted power
to ratify a treaty.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Hold on there—
We weren’t the instigators of this war
and even now we’re willing to conclude
a peace, so long as you agree to do
what’s right, and here’s what’s right: that Zeus return
1630
his scepter to the birds. If we can reach
agreement on this matter, I invite
you three ambassadors to lunch.
HERACLES:
Sounds good.
I vote for peace.
POSEIDON: (to Heracles)
You vote for what, you wretch?
You’re nothing but an idiotic pig.
What, would you oust your father from his throne?
PEISTHETAERUS:
But that’s not true. The gods will end up being
even stronger if the birds hold sway
throughout the air. At present men can trust
in clouds and bow their heads and not be noticed
1640
when they swear falsely by your names. However,
if the birds were on your side and someone,
after swearing by the crow and Zeus,
should break his oath, the crow could swoop down on him
unawares and peck his eyeballs out.
POSEIDON:
Well spoken, by Poseidon!
HERACLES:
I agree.
PEISTHETAERUS: (to the Triballian)
You there, what’s your opinion?
TRIBALLIAN:
Okey yup.
HERACLES:
See? He agrees with us.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Now pay attention.
Here’s what else we’ll do to benefit you:
If someone promises a god a gift
1650
and then tries getting out of it by saying
“Patient are the gods” and welches on
his promise out of greed, we can compel
the man to pay.
POSEIDON:
And how would you do that?
PEISTHETAERUS:
While he is counting up his silver coins
or in the bath, a vulture will (surprise!)
descend, exact a two-sheep penalty
and bring it to the god to whom it’s owed.
HERACLES: (to Poseidon)
I vote, again, to let them have the scepter.
POSEIDON: (to Heracles)
Ask the Triballian.
HERACLES: (to the Triballian)
Hey, Triballian,
you want a beating?
TRIBALLIAN:
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No thump head wit’ bat.
HERACLES:
He says he sides with me.
POSEIDON: (to Heracles and the Triballian)
If both of you
agree in this, I’ll go along with you.
HERACLES:
Hey you—we’re gonna let you have the scepter.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Oh, but I remember stipulating
something further: Zeus can keep his Hera,
but the girl “Princess” must become my wife.
POSEIDON: (turning away from Peisthetaerus)
It isn’t peace that you are lusting after.
(to Heracles and the Triballian)
Let’s head back home.
PEISTHETAERUS:
It’s no big deal to me.
(calling into the house)
Hey, cook, be sure to make the gravy sweet.
HERACLES:
1670
You’re nuts, Poseidon! Where you running off to?
We’re goin’ back to war because of just one
little female?
POSEIDON:
What else can we do?
HERACLES:
What else? Conclude a peace.
POSEIDON:
You total moron.
Don’t you know that, for a long time now,
you’ve been getting suckered? You’re completely
ruining yourself. If, after giving
the birds his sovereignty, Zeus were to die,
you would have nothing, since you are the heir
to everything he leaves behind at death.
PEISTHETAERUS: (to Heracles)
1680
My, but he’s feeding you the double-talk.
Come step aside here so that we can chat.
(aside to Heracles)
Poor guy, your uncle’s out to screw you over.
The law says you don’t get a single strawo
of your paternal property, because
you are a bastard, illegitimate.
HERACLES:
A bastard? Me? What’s that you’re sayin’ to me?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Why, certainly you are. Your mother wasn’t
your father’s wife. Why else would people call
Athena, who is Zeus’s daughter, “Heiress,”o
1690
if Zeus had any sons who could inherit?
HERACLES:
Couldn’t my father on his deathbed leave me
all of his property, though I’m a bastard?
PEISTHETAERUS:
The law does not allow it, and your uncle
Poseidon would be quick to claim that wealth
because he’s Zeus’s full and legal brother.
I’ll even quote this law of Solon’so to you:
“If there are full and legal children, bastards
shall not inherit. If there are no full
and legal children, then the next of kin
shall share the wealth among them.”
HERACLES:
1700
I’ll get nothing
whatsoever of my father’s stuff?
PEISTHETAERUS:
Nothing at all. And tell me, has your father
ever inducted you into his phratry?o
HERACLES:
He hasn’t, and that’s always worried me.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Why do you stand there gaping at the sky?
Why are you glaring upward? If you joined us,
you’d be a king and drink the milk of birds.
HERACLES:
It still seems fair to me that you are asking
to wed the girl. I vote to give her to you.
PEISTHETAERUS: (to Poseidon)
And what’s your vote?
POSEIDON:
1710
I vote against the treaty.
PEISTHETAERUS:
The whole choice hangs on the Triballian.
(to the Triballian)
What do you say?
(Heracles makes a threatening gesture at the Triballian.)
TRIBALLIAN:
Me givie birdie tall tall
pretty queen.
HERACLES:
He votes to give her up.
POSEIDON:
He isn’t saying we should hand her over.
He’s simply twittering nonsense like the swallows.
HERACLES:
Alright, he’s saying give her to the swallows.
POSEIDON: (to Heracles and the Triballian)
I’m done with this. You two negotiate
the terms of the agreement. I’ll keep mum
since you’ve made up your minds.
HERACLES: (to Peisthetaerus)
Here’s our decision:
1720
We’ve resolved to give you everything
that you’ve requested. Now come up with us
into the sky so that you can receive
Princess and all the rest.
PEISTHETAERUS:
Then these birds here
were cut to pieces for my wedding feast.
HERACLES:
You go and, if you like, I’ll stay and roast ’em.
POSEIDON:
You’re going to “roast” them? More like eat them all.
Aren’t you going to come with us?
HERACLES:
Alright.
I would have liked that job, though.
PEISTHETAERUS: (to Xanthias and Manodorus)
Someone go
and get a jacket for me for the wedding.
(During the following chorus, Peisthetaerus receives his wedding jacket and exits, stage right, with Poseidon, Heracles, and the Triballian.)
CHORUS:
Antistrophe
1730
The wicked people of Get-Rich-by-Tongue
reside off in Illusion near a spring.
They use their tongues as harvesters and sowers,
squeezers of grapes and gatherers of flowers.
People like Gorgias and Philippuso
make up the number of their savage gang.
So, throughout Attica, in sacrifice,
we cut out the Philippic tongue.
(The Second Herald enters from stage right.)
SECOND HERALD: (to the birds)
O you who have achieved prosperity,
you beings greater than mere words can say,
1740
you triply happy race endowed with wings,
welcome your ruler to his thriving palace.
As he approaches this resplendent house,
he looks more dazzling than a meteor,
more dazzling than the sun’s far-shooting glitz
of beams, and he is leading at his side
a woman of ineffable allure,
and he is brandishing the thunderbolt,
winged dart of Zeus.
An indescribably
seductive fragrance spreads throughout the air,
1750
and all those wreaths of incense in the breeze
are beautiful.
(Peisthetaerus enters from stage right. He is holding a thunderbolt. Princess, his bride, is at his side.)
Here he is. Holy Muse,
open your lips and breathe auspicious song!
CHORUS:
Make room! Fall back!
Advance! Divide!
Fly round a bridegroom blest with luck.
Oh! Oh! Her youth! Her beauty!
The marriage you have made
is one great blessing for the city.
CHORUS LEADER:
Because of him
1760
good luck has come
upon the avian race.
Welcome him and his Princess home
with songs for weddings, bridal harmonies.
CHORUS:
Strophe
During just such festivities as these
the Fates united Hera and Olympian Zeus,
who rules the gods while sitting on
the summit of his throne.
O Hymen! O Hymenaeus!o
O Hymen! O Hymenaeus!
Antistrophe
1770
Fresh, golden-feathered Eros guided
the chariot with reins pulled tight. Yes, he presided
as best man on the day Zeus made
Hera a happy bride.
O Hymen! O Hymenaeus!
O Hymen! O Hymenaeus!
PEISTHETAERUS:
I love this music; I adore your song.
The words are ravishing.
CHORUS LEADER:
Come now, exalt
Zeus’s thunder rattling the earth
1780
and the fiery glory he sends forth—
that awesome blinding thunderbolt.
CHORUS:
O golden lightning flare!
O shafts of holy fire!
O deeply-echoing booms that bring the rain.
This man now shakes the earth with you.
He now is master of
Zeus’s prerogative
and Princess, who
once was a slave at Zeus’s throne.
1790
O Hymen! O Hymenaeus!
CHORUS LEADER:
Come, feathered throngs,
singers of songs,
follow this happy pair
to Zeus’s palace and the bridal bower.
PEISTHETAERUS:
O happy wife, hold out your hand
and grip my wings and dance with me.
I’ll lift you up and swing you round.
CHORUS:
Hail, Paeon! Hip, hip, hooray!
O highest of divinities,
1800
three cheers to your success!
(The chorus members escort Peisthetaerus and Princess out through the stage door.)