![]() ![]() Soon enough, a new city is founded: Cloud-cuckoo-land. After concocting a story that the birds had been the rulers of the universe once, Peisetaerus manages to persuade a Chorus of various birds they deserve to rule it again. ![]() They should be able to thus both rule the humans from above and – by intercepting their sacrifices to the gods – starve the Olympians into submission. He realizes that if the birds just stop flying around and instead use their time to build an empire in the heavens, they might become masters of the universe. During the discussion with him, Peisetaerus comes up with a magnificent idea: to found a city in the clouds. Through his servant, the Footbird, the two do reach Tereus and he is sympathetic to their plight. ![]() They believe that he might help them find a better life somewhere in the clouds. Peisetaerus (meaning “Persuader of his Comrades”) and Euelpides (“Son of Good Hope”) – two men fed up with the politics and law-courts of Athens – have fled the city and are in search of Tereus, who has, according to legend, turned into a hoopoe sometime in the past. A “perfectly realized fantasy,” the play is unique among Aristophanes’ works in that it includes very few references to Athenian politics and two unconventional parabases. ![]() First performed in 414 BC at the City Dionysia (where it won the second prize), The Birds is the longest of Aristophanes’ surviving comedies, and perhaps the most acclaimed one. ![]()
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