peace.
PEISETAIRUS: They certainly are, so lower the frying pan As well as that couple of cups. Shoulder the spear—I mean the skewer—485 Conduct a patrol within the camp. Focus your glance from the rim of the pan. We haven’t retreated, so close the ranks.
EUELPIDES: All very fine, but tell me where,
If we get killed, we’ll be interred?
PEISETAIRUS: The potter’s field will take us in,
We’ll have the stateliest of funerals,
Because it will be told to the generals
We died in action against the foe
At the Battle of Featherstone.
LEADER: Fall in again and close the ranks. Steady your anger, ground your angst Like soldiers of the infantry, And let us discover who they may be,
These two men, as well as from where,
And also exactly what they intend.
Hey there, Hoopoe, I’m calling you!
TEREUS: [flying in from the copse]
Calling, yes, and wishing what?
LEADER: Who are these men and where are they from?
TEREUS: Two clever men coming from Greece.
LEADER: What made them make the journey
And travel all that way
Here to the land of birds?
TEREUS: A burning wish to share
Your way of life, your home,
And be with you entire.
LEADER: What on earth are you saying? What yarn are you spinning?
TEREUS: Incredible and past believing.
LEADER: What does he hope to gain by coming here? Does he expect that being with us He’ll overcome his enemies Or do a service to his friends?
TEREUS: What he promises is happiness, Prosperity beyond belief. There’s nothing that you cannot have, Here, there, and everywhere.
LEADER: Is he mentally ill?
TEREUS: Unbelievably sane.
LEADER: Perhaps he means well.
TEREUS: He has the wits of a fox:
Clever, competent, confident, subtle, the lot.
LEADER: Then let him speak—tell him to speak.
The more I hear from you
The more I am agog.
PEISETAIRUS: No, by Apollo, I’ll do nothing of the sort
unless you can assure me this isn’t a trick
but a bargain like the one the monkey made his wife
(you know the story of the man who made knives)
not to bite or attack
my bollocks or punch me in the—
EUELPIDES: You’re not going to say in the—
PEISETAIRUS: Of course not. I was going to say: in the . . . eyes.
LEADER: You have my word.
PEISETAIRUS: I want your oath.
LEADER: I swear to the above and so hope to win
by the unanimous acclaim of audience and judges.
PEISETAIRUS: And so you shall.
LEADER: And if I break my oath
let me win by only one vote.
PEISETAIRUS: Attention, troops!
Shoulder arms and go back home,
but watch the board for further postings.
CHORUS: [to PEISETAIRUS] The trickiest thing is the nature of man, apparent in everything, Nevertheless, endeavor your best and take up your stand. It’s possible you will uncover in us some hidden resource, Some attribute that our flippity minds fail to discover. So please proceed to unfold to us your imaginative plan, And clearly state the effect it will have on us and our clan.
LEADER: Go ahead now and describe to us how
the plan will affect us,
And don’t be afraid that the treaty we made
won’t protect us.
PEISETAIRUS: Zeus be my witness, I’m eager to tell you,
and whipping up words
I’ll be kneading the cake—that’s all that it takes.
Xanthias, get me
A garland; and, Manes,486 run off and fetch me
water for washing my hands.
EUELPIDES: It looks as though dinner is part of your plans.
PEISETAIRUS: No, it’s just that I’ve been trying for quite a time
to find the right phrasing for an announcement
that’s going to be a truly stupendous pronouncement
that will stir you birds to the core.
You see, it fills me with sadness to think
that you birds were once monarchs. What’s more—
LEADER: Us, monarchs? Of what?
PEISETAIRUS: Of everything that is: of me,
even Zeus, with an ancestry
that stretches back to a time before
Cronus and the Titans and even Mother Earth.
LEADER: Even Mother Earth?
PEISETAIRUS: Yes, by Apollo!
LEADER: Oh! Oh! I never heard of that.
PEISETAIRUS: That’s because you are incurious
and illiterate,
and haven’t read your Aesop,487 who
in a fable tells us
how long before any other
bird, the lark
existed, even before the Earth,
but when her father
sickened and died, there being no earth
in which to inter
the body, it lay for four days
exposed and stark
and she was at the ends of her tether
until at last
she buried him in her own head.
EUELPIDES: So that’s the reason why to this day
the lark’s father
lies buried in Headington.488
PEISETAIRUS: It follows then
that if the birds were born before
Mother Earth
and before the gods, they are
heirs of royalty.
EUELPIDES: In which case it is time for you
to sprout a beak.
For Zeus is most unlikely
to let go your fealty
in favor of a woodpecker
all that easily.
PEISETAIRUS: In the days of yore it wasn’t the deities
who were the monarchs
but the birds, and this is proved
quite easily.
To begin with, the cock, for example, reigned
and held sway
over the Persians long before
all those Dariuses
and Megabazuses, and that is the reason
he came to be called
the Persian Bird. It was to record
that history.
EUELPIDES: That is also the reason why
like the Great King
he struts about as cock of the walk,
the only fowl
who gets to have a comb for a crown—
the only one.
PEISETAIRUS: His authority and his power
used to be so great
that even today he has only to let
his reveille ring
out in the morning and everyone,
tinkers and tanners,
bakers, grocers, instrument makers,
lyre tuners,
potters and bathmen, pull on their shoes in the dim
light of dawn
and are gone.
EUELPIDES: Don’t I know it! Because of him
I lost a cloak
of Phrygian wool. I’d been invited
to a christening party,
and having had a bit of a soak
I dropped off to sleep
just before dinner, when up popped that cock
loud and hearty
and began to crow. Of course I thought it was morning
and off I started
for Halimus,489 but hardly had I got
outside the town
when a mugger clubs me to the ground
and I crumple down.
Then before I’m even ready to shout,
he’s off with my cloak and out.
PEISETAIRUS: But to resume: the monarch of Greece then
was the kite.
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EUELPIDES: Really? Of Greece?
PEISETAIRUS: That’s right. And as monarch
he started the habit
of people prostrating themselves before the kite.
EUELPIDES: Yes, by Dionysus, I know to my cost.
Once when a kite
came into sight and I fell on my bum,
with mouth agape,
I swallowed an obol490 and had to go home
with an empty basket.
PEISETAIRUS: What’s more the cuckoo once was king
over the whole
of Egypt and Phoenicia and it became the thing
when the cuckoo called
out “Cuckoo” for the inhabitants to begin
cutting their plots
of barley and wheat.
EUELPIDES: So what calling “Cuckoo” really means is
“Get going, you pricks.”
PEISETAIRUS: Very impressive was the empire
of the birds,
so much so that in a town
where an Agamemnon
or a Menelaus491 was the sovereign,
on his scepter
would be perched a bird expectantly
waiting for his snacks.
EUELPIDES: I never realized that. I always wondered
what the heck it was
in a tragedy when someone like Priam492
appeared with a bird.
I see now it was perched there
to pry on
Lysicrates493 and see how much he had plundered.
PEISETAIRUS: But the most telling proof of all
is that Zeus,
who is the present sovereign always,
appeared with an eagle
riding on his head as a
regal symbol,
while his daughter Pallas Athena
has an owl.
Apollo, as a lackey, has to make do
with a hawk.
EUELPIDES: True enough, by Demeter, but what
is the point of these birds.
PEISETAIRUS: The point is that these birds work
for themselves
so that, when, as normally happens,
a sacrifice takes place
and the entrails and fat are about to be put
in the god’s hands,
the birds dash in and grab them before
they can get to Zeus.
And nobody swore, in those days gone by,
by the gods.
They swore by the birds and even today
Lampon the oraclemonger swears
“by the Goose”
when confirming a lie.
Such was your high repute and veneration then.
But now you are featherweight birdbrained nits
Sozzled like creatures out of their wits,
Hunted with nooses, birdlime, and nets,
With snares and decoys, triggers and traps
Even in sight of the temple steps.
And when you are caught you’re sold by the dozen,
Stuffed with fodder until you are plump,
Then dressed appropriately for the oven:
Smothered in oil and grated cheese,
Mustard and vinegar, glazed with sweet
Basting sauce, shiny and hot,
Hotter than you’ve ever been,
And you no better than
A hunk of barbecued meat.
CHORUS: Yes, it’s a sad, and yes, it’s a terrible tale
you’ve told me, O Man, and it fills me with grief
for the sins of my parents, for they in the course of my life
have lost the benefits our fathers were well
endowed with and handed down.
But now by a miracle or gift from heaven
you have appeared as a timely savior,
and I commit my life and my young to your care.
LEADER: Now will you tell us what our next step is,
for unless we recover the reins of our realm
our future is bare.
PEISETAIRUS: Very well. You ought to begin
by founding a bird city between earth and heaven, then
encircling the whole empyrean in a dome
with ramparts of brick baked in a kiln
just like the walls of Babylon.
LEADER: My word! I swear by the giants Cebriones and Porphyrion494
that is one formidable town.
PEISETAIRUS: And when you have got all this ready,
demand from Zeus restitution of your sovereignty,
and is he refuses, doesn’t want to, won’t comply,
declare a holy war against him and deny
the gods passage through your territory,
as is their wont with flaming erections
on their way down for a spot of adultery
with their Alcmenes, their Alopes, and their Semeles.495
And if you catch them trespassing, clap a padlock on their
penises
and put a stopper to their fucking connections.
And I strongly urge you to send
another messenger bird to mankind
to tell them that since birds are now the lords
all sacrifices from now on must first be made to the birds
and only afterwards to the gods.
Furthermore, that whatever bird
was assigned to whatever god,
it must match that god’s propensities.
For instance, if the sacrifice is to Aphrodite,
then the bird to be sacrificed to is the Pricktail;
if it’s a sheep to Poseidon, then the duck must be offered
ground white wheat.
If the sacrifice is to Heracles, then the cormorant
must be offered a honey tart.
If it’s a ram to Zeus the King,
then before Zeus gets anything,
to that royal bird the gold tessellated wren must befall
a stud gnat sacrificed with testicles intact.
EUELPIDES: The sacrifice of a gnat! That calls for applause. Great Zeus the Thunderer will raise his eyebrows.
LEADER: But when people see us fluttering around with wings,
how will they be able to tell that we’re not just daws?
PEISETAIRUS: Don’t be silly! Hermes flits about with wings on
and is a god, as do many other deities.
Victory, for instance, flies about with golden wings on,
and so does Cupid; and Homer is pleased to observe
that Iris hovers like a dove.
EUELPIDES: And I expect Zeus will send us thunder and lightning
with wings on from above.
PEISETAIRUS: Meanwhile, if people continue to think you are
nothing
and the Olympians are real gods,
let a burst of sparrows and seed-eating finches
rise in a cloud and polish off the grain in their fields;
and when they’re starving, let Demeter dole out their rations.
EUELPIDES: But she won’t want to, that’s for sure, and ’ll give
reasons.
PEISETAIRUS: And let the ravens peck out the eyes of the bullocks
plowing their tracts, as well as of their sheep.
That’ll give them a few shocks!
Then have Apollo the doctor heal them and earn his keep.
EUELPIDES: Not till I’ve sold my own little brace of bullocks,
please.
PEISETAIRUS: But if they accept you as their god, as their Zeus,
as their Mother Earth, their Poseidon, their Cronus,
then let every blessing be theirs.
EUELPIDES: What kind of blessings? Explain.
PEISETAIRUS: Well, to begin with, the locusts will not devour
their vines in flower because a battalion
of owls and kestrels will reduce them to naught.
On top of that, your figs will no longer be beset
by gallfly and ant.
A si
ngle contingent of thrushes will wipe them out.
LEADER: But how will you make them rich in money?
You know how they crave for that.
PEISETAIRUS: When people use them for augury496
the birds will reveal where the mines are,
and to the weather reporters they’ll reveal
in which direction safe and successful voyages lie
so that no shipowner ever suffers a loss.
EUELPIDES: Never suffers a loss? Why?
PEISETAIRUS: Because when he consults a weather reporter
before a voyage, a bird will supply every detail,
such as “Don’t sail today. A storm is on the way,” or
“Sail now or you’ll miss
a successful trip.”
EUELPIDES: I’ll buy a cargo boat at once and own a ship
and stop lounging around with the rest of you.
PEISETAIRUS: And they will disclose to them the heaps of silver
buried by the ancients, of which the birds know where they lie.
The saying is true: “Only a bird knows the place of my
treasure.”
EUELPIDES: I’m selling my tub and getting me a spade,
and I’ll dig up pots of silver.
LEADER: But how will the birds make people healthy?
Isn’t that a gift of the gods?
PEISETAIRUS: Surely, if they’re healthy, they have it made?
EUELPIDES: But you know very well that a man who’s doing badly
feels poorly.
LEADER: But how will they reach a ripe old age? That’s
up to the Olympians, too—
or are they to be snuffed out while only brats?
PEISETAIRUS: Heavens, no! These birds will add three centuries to their lifespan.
LEADER: Where will they get them from?
PEISETAIRUS: Where? From themselves. Don’t you know that: “The
crow
lives five cycles of man”?497
EUELPIDES: Shucks! These birds are better kings for us than Zeus.
PEISETAIRUS: Much better, yes!
For a start, we wouldn’t have to build them
Marble temples with gilded porticoes;
Birds live in thickets and woods,
With an olive tree perhaps as temple
For anyone of the higher-ups.
We wouldn’t have to go to Delphi
To sacrifice, or to Ammon,498 but
It would be the strawberry tree‡
And wild olive we’d be among,
Holding out handfuls of wheat and barley,
Asking the birds for various blessings
And never having to wait—
All for a sprinkle of wheat.
LEADER: You dearest old man, no more an enemy of mine,
converted instead into my dearest friend—
how could it enter my head to ignore your plan?
TEREUS:499 Encouraged by your words, I have to say
And certainly to swear, that when you lend