"I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil, — to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society…for there are enough champions of civilization."
Thoreau, Walking (1862)

ἦθοc ἀνθρώπωι δαίμων
Herakleitos, fr. 119

Peisetairos and Euelpides, the comic heroes of Aristophanes' Birds reject the 'civilization' of their home city, Athens, and opt for a different way of life, conceived from the natural world of the birds. While establishing that way of life, however, these heroes are also bound to their Athenian ἦθοc. Nephelokokkygia, Bird City in the Clouds, therefore, is a reflection of Athens. It is not a precise reflection but a comic one that aims to depict the city in a manner different from its present reality. The 'comic mirror' of Greek old comedy is meant to be instructive,[1] but the 'lesson' the creation of Nephelokokkygia is meant to teach has made Aristophanes' Birds one of the most challenging and rewarding plays in the Aristophanic corpus.

Birds concerns two older Athenians, escaping from the litigious nature and complications of their city. They seek a place of refuge and expect that Tereus, the mythic king of Thrace transformed into a hoopoe, can tell them of such a place from his bird travels.[2] Having found Tereus, Peisetairos, the protagonist, and his companion Euelpides decide that life among the birds is best of all. They organize the birds by establishing a city, Nephelokokkygia. Peisetairos has the idea that, since the birds occupy the middle 'ground' between heaven and earth, the new city can rule humans and blockade the gods. In order to persuade the birds of his plan, Peisetairos tells them that they used to rule the universe before the Olympian gods. The birds then desire to regain their former glory. Throughout the second half of the play, once Nephelokokkygia is established, various undesirables try to pry their way into Peisetairos' new world; the gods are among them. Peisetairos must deal with Iris, Prometheus, Poseidon and his diplomatic entourage in order to restore the birds and finally become, at the end of the play, δαιμόνων ὐπέρτατοc.

Interpretations of Birds have varied widely. Scholars have considered the play both in and out of the context of the political atmosphere of 414, the year in which Birds, performed at the City Dionysia and produced by Kallistratos, came in second place to Ameipsias' lost Komastai.[3] More than half a year earlier, in 415, the Athenians had sailed to Sicily hoping to subject the island to their rule, but did so in the wake of a religious scandal: several weeks before the expedition sailed a band of young aristocrats had defaced and mutilated the city herms as well as profaned the Eleusinian mysteries in a midnight escapade. Some scholars have tried to tie Birds to these incidents and particularly the people associated with them.[4] However, much of Birds is developed from mythic sources, and examinations of these have produced two important studies: Hofmann's Mythos und Komödie. Untersuchungen zu den Vögeln des Aristophanes (Hildesheim 1976) and Zannini-Quirini's Nephelokokkygia: la prospettiva mitica degli Uccelli di Aristofane. (Roma 1987). Both of these works seek to understand the themes of Birds in relation to mythic constructs, especially the myth of Tereus and the Gigantomachy. Although valuable, these investigations leave out the relationship of Birds to other generic aspects of comedy and to the general historico-cultural situation of Athens. Birds awaits a study that takes into account the mythic, literary, historical, philosophic and religious influences evident in the play. This dissertation hopes to make progress in that direction.

The appearance of five divinities on the dramatic stage — Iris, Prometheus, Poseidon, the Triballian, and Herakles — is unlike that of any other comedy or tragedy. Each these gods is satirized, ridiculed or debased. While this kind of treatment is part and parcel of comedy — one need only recall the treatment of Dionysos in Frogs or in Kratinos' Dionysalexandros —, it is essential to understand how and why Aristophanes does this. By examining in detail how Aristophanes uses traditional or fictive attributes for his gods, and how these work within the dramatic context, one is able to arrive at overall impressions of the play. That is, the ideological significance of the gods who are brought on stage can give us an understanding of the play as a whole. This, however, is only possible if one also pays close attention to literary, dramatic, philosophical and historical sources outside the play. While this work aims to say something about Birds, it also seeks to present a clear analysis of each of the gods in the three scenes in which they appear.

[1] Cf. Ach. 500: τὸ γὰρ δίκαιον οἶδε καὶ τρυγωιδία; Ran. 389-90: πολλὰ μὲν γέλοιά μ᾽εἰ/πεῖν, πολλά δὲ cπουδαῖα and ibid. 686-7: τὸν ἱερὸν χορὸν δίκαιὸν ἐcτι χρηcτὰ τῆι πόλει/ξυμπαραινεῖν καὶ διδάcκειν. See also J. Henderson, "The Demos and the Comic Competition," in J. J. Winkler & F. I. Zeitlin (eds.), Nothing to Do with Dionysos? (Princeton 1990) 271-313. Though there is a paucity of information for other comic poets, it is likely they too approached comedy as Aristophanes did. Cf. Kratinos' Putine which beat both Ampeisias' Konnos and Aristophanes' Clouds in 423. At first glance one might say that Kratinos’ play was written more with a vengeance against Aristophanes and less with an eye to advise the state. This certainly is one element. But the play, for all its cleverness, must also have shown the Athenian audience something about itself that it liked or at least thought salutary. They might have felt encouraged by Kratinos' determination to rebut Aristophanes, in the spirit of Greek competition. They probably also found a reevaluation of what comedy was and how and why it was put together for its audience when in the course of the play Lady Comedy returns to her once drunken 'husband' Kratinos and together again they write comedy (some of which makes fun of Hyperbolos). For Kratinos' political outlook see W. Ameling, "Komödie u. Politik zwischen Kratinos u. Aristophanes: Das Beispiel Perikles," Quaderni Catanesi 3.6 (1981) 383-424.

[2] For Tereus, see G. Dobrov, "The Tragic and the Comic Tereus," AJP 114 (1993) 189-234, and T. Gantz, Early Greek Myth (Baltimore 1993) 240-1.

[3] Phrynichos' Monotropos placed third. Clouds had also lost to Ameipsias' Konnos in 423 (see note 1 above and cf. Ran. 12-15 where Phrynichos' and Ameipsias' dramaturgy is mentioned).