EUELPIDES
PISTHETAERUS
EPOPS (the Hoopoe)
TROCHILUS, Servant to Epops
PHOENICOPTERUS
HERALDS
A PRIEST
A POET
A PROPHET
METON, a Geometrician
A COMMISSIONER
A DEALER IN DECREES
IRIS
A PARRICIDE
CINESIAS, a Dithyrambic Bard
AN INFORMER
PROMETHEUS
POSIDON
TRIBALLUS
HERACLES
SLAVES OF PISTHETAERUS
MESSENGERS
CHORUS OF BIRDS
SCENE: A wild, desolate tract of open country; broken rocks and
brushwood occupy the centre of the stage.
EUELPIDES (TO HIS JAY)(1) Do you think I should walk straight for yon
tree?
f(1) Euelpides is holding a jay and Pisthetaerus a crow; they are the
guides who are to lead them to the kingdom of the birds.
PISTHETAERUS (TO HIS CROW) Cursed beast, what are you croaking to
me?... to retrace my steps?
EUELPIDES Why, you wretch, we are wandering at random, we are exerting
ourselves only to return to the same spot; 'tis labour lost.
PISTHETAERUS To think that I should trust to this crow, which has made
me cover more than a thousand furlongs!
EUELPIDES And that I to this jay, which has torn every nail from my
fingers!
PISTHETAERUS If only I knew where we were....
EUELPIDES Could you find your country again from here?
PISTHETAERUS No, I feel quite sure I could not, any more than could
Execestides(1) find his.
f(1) A stranger who wanted to pass as an Athenian, although coming
originally for a far-away barbarian country.
EUELPIDES Oh dear! oh dear!
PISTHETAERUS Aye, aye, my friend, 'tis indeed the road of "oh dears" we
are following.
EUELPIDES That Philocrates, the bird-seller, played us a scurvy trick,
when he pretended these two guides could help us to find Tereus,(1) the
Epops, who is a bird, without being born of one. He has indeed sold us
this jay, a true son of Tharelides,(2) for an obolus, and this crow
for three, but what can they do? Why, nothing whatever but bite and
scratch!--What's the matter with you then, that you keep opening your
beak? Do you want us to fling ourselves headlong down these rocks? There
is no road that way.
f(1) A king of Thrace, a son of Ares, who married Procne, the daughter
of Pandion, King of Athens, whom he had assisted against the Megarians.
He violated his sister-in-law, Philomela, and then cut out her tongue;
she nevertheless managed to convey to her sister how she had been
treated. They both agreed to kill Itys, whom Procne had borne to Tereus,
and dished up the limbs of his own son to the father; at the end of
the meal Philomela appeared and threw the child's head upon the table.
Tereus rushed with drawn sword upon the princesses, but all the actors
in this terrible scene were metamorph(o)sed. Tereus became an Epops
(hoopoe), Procne a swallow, Philomela a nightingale, and Itys a
goldfinch. According to Anacreon and Apollodorus it was Procne who
became the nightingale and Philomela the swallow, and this is the
version of the tradition followed by Aristophanes.
f(2) An Athenian who had some resemblance to a jay--so says the
scholiast, at any rate.
PISTHETAERUS Not even the vestige of a track in any direction.
EUELPIDES And what does the crow say about the road to follow?
PISTHETAERUS By Zeus, it no longer croaks the same thing it did.
EUELPIDES And which way does it tell us to go now?
PISTHETAERUS It says that, by dint of gnawing, it will devour my
fingers.
EUELPIDES What misfortune is ours! we strain every nerve to get to the
birds,(1) do everything we can to that end, and we cannot find our way!
Yes, spectators, our madness is quite different from that of Sacas.
He is not a citizen, and would fain be one at any cost; we, on the
contrary, born of an honourable tribe and family and living in the midst
of our fellow-citizens, we have fled from our country as hard as ever
we could go. 'Tis not that we hate it; we recognize it to be great and
rich, likewise that everyone has the right to ruin himself; but the
crickets only chirrup among the fig-trees for a month or two, whereas
the Athenians spend their whole lives in chanting forth judgments
from their law-courts.(2) That is why we started off with a basket, a
stew-pot and some myrtle boughs(3) and have come to seek a quiet country
in which to settle. We are going to Tereus, the Epops, to learn from
him, whether, in his aerial flights, he has noticed some town of this
kind.
f(1) Literally, 'to go to the crows,' a proverbial expression equivalent
to our 'going to the devil.'
f(2) They leave Athens because of their hatred of lawsuits and
informers; this is the especial failing of the Athenians satirized in
'The Wasps.'
f(3) Myrtle boughs were used in sacrifices, and the founding of every
colony was started by a sacrifice.
PISTHETAERUS Here! look!
EUELPIDES What's the matter?
PISTHETAERUS Why, the crow has been pointing me to something up there
for some time now.
EUELPIDES And the jay is also opening its beak and craning its neck to
show me I know not what. Clearly, there are some birds about here. We
shall soon know, if we kick up a noise to start them.
PISTHETAERUS Do you know what to do? Knock your leg against this rock.
EUELPIDES And you your head to double the noise.
PISTHETAERUS Well then use a stone instead; take one and hammer with it.
EUELPIDES Good idea! Ho there, within! Slave! slave!
PISTHETAERUS What's that, friend! You say, "slave," to summon Epops! It
would be much better to shout, "Epops, Epops!"
EUELPIDES Well then, Epops! Must I knock again? Epops!
TROCHILUS Who's there? Who calls my master?