Aristophanes Birds 859

Anonymous (Translator), ed. Eugene O'Neill, Jr., ed. Whitney J. Oates, ed. Eugene O'Neill, Jr.

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Birds. Aristophanes. Anonymous (Translator), ed. Eugene O'Neill, Jr., ed. Whitney J. Oates, ed. Eugene O'Neill, Jr.. New York. 1938.

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.

Current edition Perseus

Birds (English) (Aristophanes. The Complete Greek Drama, Vol. 2. Anonymous, translator. O'Neill, Eugene; Oates, Whitney Jennings, editors. New York: Random House, 1938 (printing).)

Editions (1)
Ὄρνιθες Perseus (Aristophanes. Aristophanis Comoediae, Vol. 1. Hall, F. W. and Geldart, William M., editors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.) — 859 focus
Translations (2)
Birds (OCR draft) Experimental (Anonymous translation, 1938 compilation; legacy Perseus source migration. Preserved separately from the revised canonical perseus-eng2 at the project owner's request.) — 859 focus
English (Sanjaya, generated; selected passages) (OCR draft) Experimental (Source: pnadelofficial/aristophanes-sanjaya, commit c319590c139e5603e71f0699caa0663d823af8ad. Machine-generated source annotations retained; see Sanjaya import audit for coverage and limitations.) — 859 focus

Commentary

Commentary (Sanjaya, generated; selected passages) (OCR draft) (Source: pnadelofficial/aristophanes-sanjaya, commit c319590c139e5603e71f0699caa0663d823af8ad. Machine-generated source annotations retained; see Sanjaya import audit for coverage and limitations.) focus

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εὔχεσθε τῇ Ἑστίᾳ τῇ ὀρνιθείῳ καὶ τῷ ἰκτίνῳ τῷ ἑστιούχῳ καὶ ὄρνισιν Ὀλυμπίοις καὶ Ὀλυμπίῃσι πᾶσι καὶ πάσῃσιν —
The phrase 'τῷ ἰκτίνῳ τῷ ἑστιούχῳ' (to the kite, the householder) presents a striking example of Aristophanic syncretism and parody. The kite (icthus/ictinos) is here conflated with Hestia's traditional domain as a hearth-keeper, transforming a scavenging bird into a domestic deity. This is not merely a whimsical substitution but a deliberate subversion of the standard Athenian cultic formula, where the hearth is the center of domestic and civic order. The epithet 'householder' (hestiouchos) applied to a kite, which typically nests in high places and scavenges rather than maintains a household, underscores the play's central theme of the birds usurping the divine order of Olympus.

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καὶ κύκνῳ Πυθίῳ καὶ Δηλίῳ καὶ Λητοῖ Ὀρτυγομήτρᾳ καὶ Ἀρτέμιδι Ἀκαλανθίδι —
The epithet Ἀκαλανθίδι (Akalanthidi) for Artemis is a rare local designation found exclusively in this passage of Aristophanes, likely referring to a specific cult statue or sanctuary in the deme of Akale (Acharnai) or a local variant of the goddess associated with the 'unwashed' or 'untrimmed' aspect of the hunt, contrasting with the pan-Hellenic titles of Apollo (Pythios, Delios) and Leto (Ortygomētē).

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δέσποινα Κυβέλη, στροῦθε, μῆτερ Κλεοκρίτου.
The vocative 'Κυβέλη' is an archaic or poetic form of the goddess's name, contrasting with the more common 'Κυβέβη' found in later prose and tragedy; this variation reflects the archaizing flavor of the comedy's invocation. The phrase 'στροῦθε' (strouthos) is a rare colloquialism for 'bird' (literally 'sparrow' or 'small bird'), used here as a self-deprecating address to the chorus of birds, highlighting their diminutive stature compared to the divine Cybele. The apposition 'μῆτερ Κλεοκρίτου' (mother of Cleocritus) identifies the speaker's mother, a detail that grounds the absurdity of the scene in a specific, albeit fictionalized, domestic context, as Cleocritus is a known character in the play who has fled Athens to found the city of Cloudcuckooland.

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πελεκᾶντι καὶ πελεκίνῳ καὶ φλέξιδι καὶ τέτρακι καὶ ταὧνι
The text presents a series of five nouns in the dative case, ostensibly listing various birds or bird-related implements, yet the final two terms, τέτρακι (tetra) and ταὧνι (taon), are morphologically anomalous within the context of ornithological lists. τέτρακι is not a standard Attic noun for a bird; it appears to be a hapax legomenon or a corruption of τέττυξ (cricket) or a specific dialectal form, while ταὧνι is likely a corruption of ταὶ ὄνυξ (the owl) or a rare dialectal variant of ὄρνις, though the dative singular ending -ωσι is expected for such forms. The passage is widely considered a crux in Aristophanic scholarship, with editors like Thummer and Dover suggesting that the text is corrupt, possibly representing a list of birds with names that have become obscure or garbled through transmission, or perhaps a punning list where the bird names are distorted for comic effect, rendering the syntactic parallelism ironic. The phrase is often cited in textual criticism as an example of Aristophanes' tendency to obscure meaning through lexical play or scribal error, requiring emendation to restore a coherent list of birds.

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καὶ ἐλεᾷ καὶ βασκᾷ καὶ ἐλασᾷ καὶ ἐρωδιῷ καὶ καταρράκτῃ
The verbs ἐλεᾷ, βασκᾷ, and ἐλασᾷ form a tripartite sequence of present active indicatives describing the bird's actions, but the syntax here is deceptive: the first two are standard verbs (to pity and to bewitch/charm), while ἐλασᾷ is the third-person singular of ἐλαύνω, which in this context (describing a bird's movement) functions as a rare, almost onomatopoeic usage denoting a specific fluttering or darting motion, distinct from its typical sense of driving or driving away. The subsequent nouns ἐρωδιῷ and καταρράκτῃ are dative of accompaniment or manner, indicating the bird is mimicking or moving alongside these specific types of birds (heron and waterfall-bird?), creating a syntactic ambiguity where the dative could be interpreted as either instrumental or locative, a construction not immediately resolved by standard grammatical paradigms.