At Birds 1494 Prometheus has snuck away from Olympos to inform Peisetairos of the divine embassy that will come to Nephelokokkygia to sue for a lifting of the embargo on Olympian sacrifices and, more important, to reveal that the secret of Olympian rule is a woman named Basileia, or Queen. This scene indicates, I submit, the political intent of the play. Basileia, Prometheus tells Peisetairos, controls everything that is important for Zeus’ reign. She is tamia of Zeus’ supply of euboulia, eunomia, sophrosyne, neoria, loidoria, kolakretes and triobola.[1] Tamia desigantes a woman, either a wife or servant, who supervises the dispensation of her husband’s or master’s possessions. In the Odyssey, for example, Eurykleia is tamia of Odysseus’ store of gold, bronze, clothing, olive oil and wine. It is likely the audience of Birds thought of Basileia as more than just a servant, and perhaps a daughter of Zeus whose control of his storehouse serves as a dowry for marriage.

When Prometheus discloses these aspects of Zeus’ political storehouse, they sound, at first, appropriate to Olympian rule. The first two items can easily be associated with Zeus. In Mantineia, for example, Zeus was worshipped as Euboulos, and Eunomia is his child by Thetis. But with sophrosyne and certainly the four items that follow, these seven attributes are meant to recall the political atmosphere of Greece, not Olympos. The first three items, I think, recall not Athenian but Spartan characteristics. Thucydides 1,84 recreates a speech in which Archidamas, king of Sparta in 432, describes the manner of the Spartan people. Their slowness and procrastination, he says, are really aspects of sophrosyne emphron. He also describes them as warlike and eubouloi. They are warlike because aidos has a great deal to do with sophrosyne, and they are eubouloi because they were educated with a severity that makes them too prudent (sophronesteron) to disobey their nomoi. Thucydides 1,18 also tells us that Sparta from a very early time was characterized by eunomia and was always free of tyrants. Because the pro-Spartan tendencies of the Athenian elite class are well-know, to Aristophanes’ audience these elements would have sounded not only like Spartan ethos but also slogans of the Athenian elite class.

The final four elements, neoria, loidoria, kolakretes annd triobola, easily reflect Athenian democracy in the last half of the fifth century. More particularly they are aspects of demagogic policy as it developed especially from the time of Pericles. If then we are to see Olympos as a thinly disguised Athens, the question that must be answered is why such disparate qualities are mentioned in the same breath. Why are aristocratic, even pro-Spartan ideology, and decidedly Athenian demagogic realities the key to ruling the universe? At this moment in the play, Prometheus implies that a successful government should include all these elements.

A start to the answer lies in the strange events that took place in the summer of 415: the profanation of the Eleusinian mysteries and the mutilation of the herms by hetaireiai of elites. Through these events serious attention was drawn to the place of elites in Athenian democracy. While it is true many Athenians thought these actions were directed against Athenian democracy, it is more probable that there was no organized effort on the part of the elites to overthrow Athens at this time and that the sentiment of the Athenian people arose from their general fear of overthrow. As Martin Ostwald states “Andocides’ confession and Alcibiades’ conduct constituted the lightning rod that kept the spark [of civil strife] from igniting.”[2] It is within this context that the dowry of Basileia presents the audience of Birds with the suggestion that it was essential for both elite and mass governmental practice to operate harmoniously. If the threat of tyrannical or oligarchic rule had been real in 414 the combination of these seven attributes would have made little sense to the audience. In 411, however, when Thesmophoriazousai was produced, there was an immediate threat of a coup d’état, and this is reflected in the last stasimon of the play where Athena, who is said to loathe tyrants, is earnestly called upon. In 414, however, their was still hope, especially after the diffusion of the stasis that followed the events of the summer of 415, that the previous success Alcibiades, and those elites like him, could still benefit the Athenian democratic process and help to end the Peloponnesian war. Interestingly, Plato, in his Protagoras (518-19) has Sokrates explain to Kallikles that the downfall of Athenian democracy during the Peloponnesian war was due not to the demagogic or elite rulers of the time but to Themistokles, Kimon and Perikles who established the institutions of limenes, neoria, teiche and phoroi without the guidance of sophrosyne and dikaiosyne. Writing some thirty years later, Plato seems to echo Aristophanes sentiments in this passage of Birds.

Through Basileia's dowry, then, Aristophanes presents the challenge of the Athenian polis: the incorporation of aristocratic and demagogic ideals into the political process. This idea is timely since after the failure of the Peace of Nikias in 421 the smaller Greek states divided themselves on ideological principles, siding either with democratic Athens or oligarchic Sparta. The suggestion in Birds that both ideologies are the key to ruling if only a fantasy universe seems to me another of Aristophanes attempts to provided Athens with his own comically stamped solution to the war and internal problems in Athens.

If the fear, not the threat, of oligarchic rule was real in 415, was it still possible for Aristophanes to present to his audience a comic hero who is, without hesitation, heralded as tyrannos at line 1708? I think so. Nan Dunbar, in her commentary on Birds, notes that the word tyrannos here should imply that “Peis[etairos] has now become ‘king’, of birds as of everything else on earth, in keeping with the Succession Myth which inspired the plot.”[3] I am not convinced that the succession myth holds so much sway over the plot of Birds, but that Peisetairos is replacing Zeus is clear. Furthermore, while some scholars would see Peisetairos’ takeover as denouncement of the birds’ place in this new world and so a warning to Athens of what might be if such leaders gain control of Athens, I doubt the audience of 414 thought of Zeus or Peisetairos as the kind of rulers it feared might take over Athens.

The problem here lies in the word tyrannos, which for Birds must be defined first with reference to Zeus, who though sometimes called tyrannos, is most often referred to as father and king of gods and men; in this sense, the sinister idea of tyrant is absent. Second, the word should be understood with reference to the Aristophanic use of the word. When it appears in the plays of Aristophanes produced before there actually were oligarchic regimes in 411 and 404, the word tyrannos or tyrannis is a charge hurled against the elite class by demagogic leaders and is meant as a humorous exaggeration of something that was highly improbable, unlike oligarchic rule. In Wasps, for example, the chorus leader accuses Bdelykleon of tyranny simply because he wants his father to live a bion gennaion away from the law courts. Anything, he says to the chorus, they construe as tyranny or conspiracy. He says he hasn’t even heard the term in fifty years. The chorus of old men in Lysistrata also accuses the women of tyranny. In each of these plays, tyranny is associated with Sparta, even though Thucydides called the city afie‹ éturãnneuto! and as Lysistrata reminds the chorus of old Athenian men: it was Sparta who helped save Athens from the tyrant Hippias in 510. Furthermore, although the reign of Hippias was remember as oppressive, the reign of Peisistratos and his sons was described as “tyrannis in the time of Kronos,”[4] a reference to the Golden Age that seems most suited to the context of Birds. In the years following 414, the Athenians would in fact fear the safety of their democracy, but because of the mythic context of Birds and the comic levity with which Aristophanes uses the term, the title of tyrannos was probably not associated with these fears. In addition, the chorus at Knights 1114 uses the word tyrannos interestingly to refer to the sovereignty of the people. They say to Demos, “you really do have a fine rule since all men fear you like they fear a tyrannos.” The demos here is tyrannos, but in comedy it is the protagonist who restores or secures this position for the demos. Peisetairos, I argue, does no less. Nephelokokkygia is not a one man tyranny but, as it is expressed in Knights, the ‘tyranny of the demos,’ in which Peisetairos rules not over but with the birds.

Peisetairos and his accomplishment in Nephelokokkygia, then, represent the possibilities that could come about for Athenians if they would reconsider the importance of the place of elites in their government. Peisetairos is not meant to remind the audience of someone like Alcibiades as Süvern postulated long ago and as Vickers has done more recently;[5] rather, he is an amalgam of two classes of elite aristocrats in Athens. These two groups are represented by both the old and the young.[6] The older generation of elite, to whom the demos had traditionally turned for handling affairs of the state, had by the late fifth century become hesitant to participate in civic duties. This to a large degree was due to the euthynai or audits that they might undergo each year for public office. Their fear that a sycophant would wrongly accuse them of misappropriating funds and that they in turn would be discredited, often drove them away from active service and sometimes into becoming apragmones.[7] Peisetairos' own fear of dikai[8] and debt, and his desire to find a place different from Athens in these respects, resemble strongly that of the older elite in Athens at the time.

Peisetairos, however, also shares similarities with the group of young elites, like Alcibiades. These were the same wealthy young men who had sat at the feet of sophists and learned how to argue any case to victory.[9] Peisetairos' own sophistic abilities are quite evident throughout the play but are best emphasized by Tereus’ introduction of both him and Euelpides to the chorus of birds: “Two men quite adept at the use of words have come here to my house” (318). But unlike Strepsiades and Pheidippides in Clouds, Peisetairos uses his abilities as a rhetorician to establish a new order for himself and the birds. He does not use sophistic cunning to get out of paying debts, or deny the existence of the gods. This he might have done in Athens. But he abandons that world and creates his own in which debt no longer exists (cf. 157) and the gods are forcefully ousted.

Ultimately, Peisetairos is a combination of the two sides of the elite class.[10] He comprises the older generation's desire to distance itself from the demagogic trudge of Kleons who would prevent them from governing by imposing intimidating if not fraudulent audits; and the younger generation's desire to become an active part of the democratic process. Accordingly, by presenting Peisetairos in this way, Aristophanes was able to appeal to a larger portion of his audience, a portion that would have contained not only old and young aristocrats but also middle class Athenians, some of whom probably sided with Aristophanes' ongoing battle against demagogic rule of Athens.

Peisetairos is the ideal kind of leader and statesman who guides the demos in a mutually benefitial direction. He incorporates the dowry of Olympos into Nephelokokkygia. Yet Peisetairos is a better leader, for example, than someone like Alcibiades because, after the initial conflict with the birds, he has their constant trust. Athens' relationship with Alcibiades was never stable. Kleon and Hyperbolos,[11] on the other hand, always portrayed as selfishly misleading and harming the demos, had surreptitiously gained the trust of the masses, as Demos laments in Knights. Peisetairos, however, is still better than these, at least through the eyes of the play, because it is he as well as the birds, their demos and their city, who triumph in the end.

The embassy-scene of Birds demonstrates how the government of Nephelokokkygia operates more effectinvely than that of Olympos as Athens. When the embassy arrives Peisetairos is cooking up two dissident birds, who were found guilty of rising up against (§pani!tãmenoi) the bird demos. This quasi-cannibalism, not too unlike the state-ordered deaths of the men of Melos, is a demonstration of how effectively the new ruler deals with rebellion in this newly established society. The affront against the bird demos is quelled with no consequences, and was probably not shocking to the audience. MacDowell has recently said that "execution was the normal penalty for treason in Athens as elsewhere” and that “there is no reason why this penalty should not have been imposed democratically" and Henderson that "a rebellion against the demos is not something most Athenians in 414 would have been any more prepared to be lenient about than they had in 415."[12] The text is clear that the bird demos voted democractically for this penalty: “tois demotikoisin orneois edoxan adikein” (1584-85).

Aristophanes’ presentation of Poseidon further emphasizes political differences between Nephelokokkygia and Olympos as Athens. When Poseidon enters with a Triballian god and Herakles, the Triballian is having some difficulty arranging his himation in the proper aristocratic way as Poseidon’s no doubt is arranged. To him this is a sign of the Triballian’s utter vulgarity and he cries “Oh, Democracy, where are you going to lead us to one of these days, if the gods can actually vote this fellow into office?”[13] Poseidon's cry against democracy, I argue, is meant to call to mind concerns, like those of the aristocratic Knights, about radical democracy or mob rule.[14] It also further emphasizes the political differences between Nephelokokkygia and Olympos as Athens. In the end, Poseidon’s diplomatic efforts are thwarted by the Triballian’s gullibility and Herakles’ greater desire to eat the barbecued birds than to negotiate an acceptable settlement. Here there is a distinct juxtaposition in the embassy-scene between the very effective relationship between Peisetairos and the birds and the very ineffectual relationship between Poseidon, an obvious representative of the elites, and the Triballian and Herakles, representatives of the Athenian masses.

With Birds, therefore, Aristophanes invited the Athenians to contemplate a new type of city characterized by the incorporation of both elite ideals and the more practical realities of democracy while there was still a chance of doing so.[15] Only in 413, one year after the production of Birds and immediately following their defeat in Sicily, did the Athenians turn to the upper class, by instituting the ten probouloii[16] and later in 411 the short-lived 500 — and then only in desperation. When Peisetairos marries Basileia at the play’s end, her dowry finds a compatible home and the audience is left with the suggestion that somewhere between elite and mass ideology, there is an ideal government worthy of contemplation.

[1] One may argue that creating a string of obviously discordant nouns is something Aristophanes is fond of doing since he does this often, and that there is more humor here than import (as I would have it). But the examples we find in his extant plays typically juxtapose serious sentiments with ridiculous ones, or abstract ideas with concrete. And in these lists, the ridiculous and concrete nouns and adjectives, in every example except this passage from Birds, have something to do with sounds, smells or actions. Cf. Ach. 545-54 , Nu. 50-2 and 1007, Pax 525-6 and Ran. 146-53. This Birds passage is unique because none of the nouns are sounds, smells or actions. Therefore, I think the audience members would have curiously raised their eyebrows rather than belly laughed as I think they did in the other passages I cite.

[2] Ostwald, Popular Sovereignty, p. 333.

[3] p. 745 ad 1708-9.

[4] Arist. Ath. Pol. 16,7 and [Plato] Hipparchos 229b.

[5] Süvern, Essays on "The Birds" of Aristophanes, trans. W. Hamilton (London 1835 [orig. 1827]); M. Vickers, Pericles on Stage. Political Comedy in Aristophanes’ Early Plays (Austin 1997).

[6] This older elite group should not be confused with the older middle and lower class Athenians who stayed home during the war and like Philokleon in Wasps obtained an almost livable salary from jury duty in the law courts. There are several important publications on the generation gap so obvious in late fifth-century Athens: W. G. Forrest, "The Athenian Generation Gap," YCS 24 (1975) 37-52; L.B. Carter, The Quiet Athenian (Oxford 1986), esp. the chapters, "Noble Youths," and "Rich Quietists;" Ostwald Sovereignty, 229-250. E.W. Handley, "Aristophanes and the Generation Gap," in A. H. Sommerstein et al. (eds.), Tragedy, Comedy and the Polis (Bari 1993) 417-a430.

[7] Cf., e.g. the passage at Eq. 259-65 in which an apragmon, who has run off to the Chersonese to avoid audits, is summoned back by Kleon to face charges simply because he has money to be exploited.

[8] Cf. esp. Av. 40-1.

[9] A locus classicus for this is Aristophanes' Banqueteers (produced in 427 by Kallistratos) fr. 205 PCG.

[10] "True, Aristophanic heroes, as opposed to Aristophanic villains, never represent particular individuals but are always fictitious composites," Henderson, "Peisetairos and the Athenian Elite," p. 10.

[11] Platnauer Peace, ad 681 has all the pertinent information on Hyperbolos among the comedians. Cf. also Thuk. remarks at 8,73,3. Cf. Thuk. 3,36,6; 4,21,3; 4,28,5 and 39,3; and esp. 5,16,1 for opinions about Kleon.

[12] MacDowell, Aristophanes and Athens (Oxford 1995), p. 224 and Henderson, "Peisetairos and the Athenian Elite," in Gregory Dobrov (ed.), Aristophanes' Birds and Nephelokokkugia. Charting the Comic Polis (Syracuse 1990) p. 15.

[13] Trans. Sommerstein Birds.

[14] But only after the death of Perikles in 429. Cf. Thukydides' description of Perikles' rule at 2,65 and esp. 2,65,8-10.

[15] Though enthusiasm might have begun to wane with Alkibiades' defection to the Spartans when, before the performance of Birds, the Salaminia went to Sicily to recall him.