Aristophanes Birds 462

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Birds. Aristophanes. . 2026-09-08.

Current edition Experimental

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

Provisional text from uncorrected OCR; expect errors.

Editions (1)
Ὄρνιθες Perseus (Aristophanes. Aristophanis Comoediae, Vol. 1. Hall, F. W. and Geldart, William M., editors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.) — 462 focus
Translations (2)
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.) — 462 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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Line 476

ὁ πατὴρ ἄρα τῆς κορυδοῦ νυνὶ κεῖται τεθνεὼς Κεφαλῆσιν.
The proper name Κεφαλῆσιν is the dative plural of Κεφαλή, referring to the Boeotian city of Cephisia (not the common noun 'head'), which serves as the setting for the bird society in this passage. The use of the dative of place where without a preposition is standard for city names, but the specific identification of Cephisia as the location of the 'father' (likely a pun on the bird's lineage or a specific character reference) is crucial for the joke: the father of the quail (κορυδῶν) is buried in Cephisia, a place already associated with the birds' flight and the play's geography.

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Line 491

σκυτῆς βαλανῆς ἀλφιταμοιβοὶ τορνευτολυρασπιδοπηγοί·
This line presents a notorious crux in Aristophanic scholarship, specifically the attribution of the epithet 'βαλανῆς' (balanēs, 'acorn') to the 'σκυτῆς' (skytēs, 'shoemaker'). While the sentence describes a guild of craftsmen whose names are compounded to satirize the proliferation of new professions in the bird-city (Cloudcuckooland), the phrase 'shoemaker of the acorn' is semantically opaque. Manuscript tradition offers the reading βαλανῆς, but the context of shoemaking (working with leather) makes 'acorn' nonsensical unless it refers to a specific, now-lost, tool or a bizarre mythological association. Many editors, including Meineke and later Dindorf, have conjectured that the text is corrupt, suggesting emendations such as βαλανῆς to βάλανος (a type of leather tool?) or positing a lacuna. The most compelling scholarly consensus, however, treats this not as a literal reference but as a hyperbolic comic invention where the absurdity of the compound itself is the point: the birds have created a profession so specialized and ridiculous that the 'shoemaker' works on an acorn. The difficulty lies in determining whether Aristophanes intended a genuine pun on a lost technical term or if the corruption is genuine, a debate that remains unresolved in the critical apparatus.