Aristophanes Birds 989

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).)

No corresponding passage available

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.) — 989 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.) — 989 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

1010. mvp-tlg0019-tlg006-sanjaya-com-eng1-63

Line 1010

Μέτων —
This fragment represents the opening of a stichomythia (line-by-line dialogue) between Meton and the Birds. The character Meton is introduced here as a specific type of 'professor' (sophist) specializing in astronomy and geometry, whose later lines (e.g., claiming he can measure the sky with a surveyor's rod) serve as Aristophanes' satire of the new scientific empiricism and the pretensions of intellectual elites in late 5th-century Athens. The abruptness of the single name functions as a dramatic cue for the entrance of a new speaker in a rapid-fire exchange, a structural device common in the parabasis or early dialogue scenes of the play.