Birds
Aristophanes' comedy in which two Athenians found a utopian city in the sky among the birds
The Meaning of Birds
Birds was performed at the City Dionysia in 414 BCE, winning second prize. Two disenchanted Athenians, Peisetaerus and Euelpides, flee the city's litigiousness and tax collectors to seek a better life among the birds. They persuade the bird kingdom to build a great walled city in the sky called Nephelokokkygia — Cloud Cuckoo Land — which will intercept the smoke of sacrifices rising from earth to the gods, effectively blockading Olympus. The scheme works: the gods begin to starve, and a parade of human opportunists — priests, poets, oracle-mongers, and bureaucrats — arrive seeking citizenship in the new utopia, only to be driven away. Zeus is forced to negotiate, and Peisetaerus demands sovereignty over the cosmos along with the hand of Basileia, the personification of divine kingship. The play is a fantastical political satire that mocks Athenian imperialism while creating one of the most inventive comic worlds in all of ancient literature.
Parents
None recorded
Symbols
Fun Fact
The phrase "Cloud Cuckoo Land" used in English to describe an unrealistic fantasy originates directly from Aristophanes' Birds
Words We Inherited
English words and phrases that trace back to this myth. See our full guide to English words from Greek mythology.
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💭 conceptLiterature
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