Aristophanes Birds 407

ed. F. W. Hall, ed. William M. Geldart

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Birds. Aristophanes. ed. F. W. Hall, ed. William M. Geldart. Oxford. 1906.

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.

Current edition Perseus

Ὄρνιθες (Greek) (Aristophanes. Aristophanis Comoediae, Vol. 1. Hall, F. W. and Geldart, William M., editors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.)

Translations (3)
Birds Perseus (Aristophanes. The Complete Greek Drama, Vol. 2. Anonymous, translator. O'Neill, Eugene; Oates, Whitney Jennings, editors. New York: Random House, 1938 (printing).) — 407 focus
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.) — 407 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.) — 407 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

423. mvp-tlg0019-tlg006-sanjaya-com-eng1-14

Line 423

λεκτὸν οὔτε πιστόν· ὡς
The adjective λεκτόν (lekton) is used here in a technical philosophical sense, denoting 'that which is apprehensible by the intellect' or 'comprehensible,' a term that would later become central to Stoic epistemology (opposed to αἰσθητόν, 'sensible'). While Aristophanes predates the formalization of Stoic doctrine, this usage anticipates the later philosophical dichotomy, contrasting the intelligible realm with the sensible world implied by the subsequent clause. The phrase οὔτε πιστόν ('neither credible/trustworthy') creates a double negation of both intelligibility and credibility, a rhetorical device typical of the play's satire on the absurdity of the birds' proposed city, where even the foundational logic of their new regime is presented as both incomprehensible and unbelievable.