I would like to thank Professors Peter Burian, Helene Foley, Jeffrey Henderson, Niall Slater, Christian Wolff and the readers for Ramus for their helpful criticism of earlier drafts of this essay.

All citations and translations of the Birds are taken from Sommerstein, Alan H. (ed. and trans.), Birds (Warminster 1987)Google Scholar.

1. Silk, Michael, ‘Aristophanes as a Lyric Poet’, YCS 16 (1980), 99–151Google Scholar.

2. Add to these Ussher, R.G., Aristophanes (Oxford 1979), 17 and 20Google Scholar. ‘Beautiful’ is not an anachronistic term. Kalos is often used as an attribute of song or poetry in the plays of Aristophanes. See Thesmophoriazusae 49, 60, 111, 164, 178; Birds 683. Also frequent is hēdus (‘pleasant’): Thes. 130; Birds 681. Similarly glukeios (‘sweet’) at Birds 750.

3. Lysistrata is a unique example in Aristophanic comedy of a wholly public-spirited protagonist, who is not shown pursuing individual appetites. Dionysos goes down to Hades originally with the private purpose of retrieving Euripides, the poet who gave him pleasure. His purpose changes in the course of the play to the more public goal of saving the city and (therefore) bringing back Aiskhylos. Hie same dichotomy between personal pleasure and public good is seen in the agōn of the Clouds.

4. E.g. Coulon, V. (ed.) and Van Daele, H. (tr.), Aristophane, Tome III: Les Oiseaux, Lysistrata (Paris 1967)Google Scholar: ‘Deux citoyens d’Athènes …, dégoutés de vivre parmi les Athéniens “toute leur vie occupés de procès”, quittent volontairement cette ville’; Merry, W.W. (ed.), Aristophanes: The Birds (Oxford 1889: repr. 1966), 7Google Scholar: “No longer able to endure the litigation, worry, and expense of the city’; Whitman, C.H., Aristophanes and the Comic Hero (Cambridge MA 1964), 168CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘Two aging Athenians …, disgusted with life in Athens, its tumult of business, war, debts, and litigation, have decided to consult the birds … ’

5. Cf. Russo, C.F., Aristofane: autore di teatro (Florence 1962), 235Google Scholar: ‘Il protagonista degli Uccelli è Pistetero, ma egli si afferma come tale a prologo inoltrata. Pistetero in fatti balza drammaticamente in primo piano solo col verso 162, allorche esprime un progetto rivoluzionario … Fine allora il personaggio più loquace era stato Euelpide.’ Similarly Strauss, Leo, Socrates and Aristophanes (Chicago and London 1966: repr. 1980), 161–66Google Scholar and 173f., traces differences between the two characters.

6. Most familiarly in Süvern, J.W., Essay on The Birds of Aristophanes, tr. Hamilton, W.R. (London 1835)Google Scholar.

7. Strauss (n.5 above), 191–92.

8. Strauss (n.5 above, 182) therefore points to the youth’s fundamental justice. Sommerstein (ad 1360f.) does not understand why Peisetairos considers the young man to be eunous; Strauss’s explanation is plausible. Although the manuscripts term this character patraloias, Sommerstein lists him as neanias (‘young man’) because he has not, as yet, committed a violent act against his father (ad 1337).

9. Arrowsmith, William, ‘Aristophanes’ Birds: The Fantasy Politics of Eros’, Arion n.s. 1 (1973), 119–67Google Scholar, sees Birds as a thoroughgoing condemnation of Athenian imperialism, insatiable appetitiveness and polupragmosunij; Peisetairos embodies these features at their worst; his ultimate triumph is grotesque.

10. Contrast Whitman (n.4 above, 27 and esp. 28), who is the primary exponent of the alazōn reading, which sees Aristophanes’ protagonists as self-assertive, life-affirming, essentially wholesome. Overall, however, I see much in Aristophanes’ comedies that is more complex, contradictory and rather darkly provocative than Whitman acknowledges. Recently James Redfield (‘Drama and the Community: Aristophanes and Some of his Rivals’, in Winkler, John J. and Zeitlin, Froma [eds], Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in its Social Context [Princeton 1990], 314–55Google Scholar) argued, analogously to Whitman, that Aristophanes’ plays offer an ‘invigorating’ (328) ‘dream of renewal’ (329) and that ‘we leave a play of Aristophanes ebullient and clowning’ (330). Yet if a play offers only a dream of renewal, if it portrays serious problems as having only fantasy solutions, is it “invigorating” or, rather, despairing? I would argue that the resolution of, e.g., Acharnians, Lysistrata, or Frogs is achieved in so fantastical a way as to subvert the surface happy ending. Generally, there continues to be debate about whether the rule-breaking behaviours of comedy subvert or, in fact, support the status quo. (See Edwards, Anthony T., ‘Aristophanes’ Comic Poetics: Trux, Scatology, skomma’, TAPA 121 [1991], 178 n.52Google Scholar, for bibliography on whether or not Aristophanes has a serious political purpose.) Most critics (recently Edwards, Leslie Collins, ‘Poetic Values and Poetic Technique in Aristophanes’, Ramus 19 [1990], 143–159CrossRefGoogle Scholar) see Aristophanes as a political conservative. Redfield also perceives a conservative drift in Aristophanes’ texts, but attributes no political significance to it. ‘Aristophanes’ conservatism, his love of simple virtues, primal verities, and the good old times, was in fact imposed on him by his genre, which is to say, his social role’ (331). But why should not the simple reverse be so? Indeed, Plato’s characterisation of Aristophanes in the Symposium suggests the nostalgic, regressive, even despairing attitude which, I believe, we find in the plays. In the Symposium Aristophanes is made to recount a myth which idealises a (hypothetical) past and irretrievable perfection. Despite the charm, humour and fantasy of Aristophanes’ myth, it implies a tragic world view (man is punished for hubris, perfection is irretrievable, the gods menace even further punishment, etc.). This myth reflects Plato’s reading of Aristophanes as having a regressive and tragic vision. A fresh consideration of Aristophanes’ political impact is Jeffrey Henderson, “The Demos and the Comic Competition’ (Winkler and Zeitlin op. cit. 271–313). Henderson draws a distinction between the specific and individual targets of comic poets’ abuse (e.g. the war or Cleon) and the ideals and ideology of the democracy, which, he says, they did not assail. Especially significant for the present essay is Henderson’s observation that the Old Oligarch associates the demos with pursuit of material and financial self-interest–to the exclusion of sports and music, which they disdain and, therefore, leave to the aristocracy to support (278). The putative festival origins of comedy may or may not help us to read the sophisticated and evolved texts of Aristophanes. For bibliography and discussion of this question see Goldhill, Simon, ‘Comic Inversion and Inverted Commas: Aristophanes and Parody’ in The Poet’s Voice: Essays on Poetics and Greek Literature (Cambridge 1991), 167–222Google Scholar.

11. Hall, F. W. and Geldart, W. M., Aristophanis Comoediae (Oxford 1906)Google Scholar attribute the line to Peisetairos, but Coulon (n.4 above) and Sommerstein give it to Euelpides. Katemelitōse (224) is a hapax. See B. Marzullo, , ‘L’interlocuzione negli Uccelli di Aristofane’, Philologus 114 (1970), 191Google Scholar.

12. See Sifakis, G.M., Parabasis and Animal Choruses: A Contribution to the History of Attic Comedy (London 1971), 97Google Scholar. Cf. Dover, K.J., Aristophanic Comedy (London 1972), 145Google Scholar.

13. See especially Zimmermann, Bernhard, Untersuchungen zur Form und dramatischen Technik der Aristophanischen Komōdien (Königstein 1985–87), i.223f.Google Scholar: ‘Tereus hat demnach sein Wecklied noch ohne musikalische Begleitung als solo a capella gesungen. Gerade dadurch, da Aristophanes die beide Komponenten, Gesang und Flötenspiel, trennt und die Stimme der Nachtigall durch das Flötenspiel nachahmen läβt … Auf Tereus’ Lied ertönt … der Gesang der Nachtigall als Soloeinlage des Auleten, die ihre Wirkung auf die beiden Zuhörer nicht verfehlt.’

14. See Sommerstein and Merry (n.4 above) ad loc.

15. Aristophanes himself seems to have used techniques of the new music, while adhering to a traditional moral position. L.C. Edwards (n.10 above) deals with this sort of contradiction. McEvilley, Thomas (‘Development in the Lyrics of Aristophanes’, AJP 91 [1970], 257–76Google Scholar) discusses Aristophanes’ increasing use of the techniques of the new music (increased mixing of metres, abandonment of strophic responsion, mixing of choral and monodic song). McEvilley sees this innovation as restricted to technical features, while Aristophanes remained a traditionalist in substance. ‘It would seem, then, that Aristophanes is condemning the [airy, overly] intellectual content of the new songs … it is clear that the emphasis [of his otherwise paradoxically critical parodies of the new music] is on an overblown manner of speech, not on metrical and structural innovations’ (273). Zimmermann, in ‘Comedy’s Criticism of Music’ (forthcoming), explains differently the paradox of Aristophanes’ simultaneous uncritical use and criticism of the new music, hypothesising that Aristophanes found musical innovation to be politically and morally acceptable in comedy but not in tragedy.

16. See Pozzi, Dora C., ‘The Polis in Crisis’, in Pozzi, Dora C. and Wickersham, John M. (eds.), Myth and the Polis (Ithaca and London 1991), 126–63Google Scholar, esp. 150 n.77.

17. Friedrich, P. and Redfield, J., ‘Speech as a Personality Symbol: The Case of Achilles’, Language 54 (1978), 263–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 271: ‘There are two contrasting rhetorics. One we may call second-person rhetoric; it persuades others—convinces them that certain facts are objectively true, that certain attitudes ought to be held, or that a certain course of action is proper or desirable. The second kind of rhetoric we may call first-person; it also persuades its audience, but not so much of facts about the world as of facts about the speaker. Through the expression of feelings and attitudes in an emotionally convincing way, this rhetoric convinces the audience that the speaker really does think what he says he thinks … The contrast is roughly equivalent to Biiler’s (1934) distinction between conative … vs. expressive functions in communication … The first kind of rhetoric is characteristic of the successful politician or lawyer; the second, of the successful lyric poet.’

18. Translations from Sommerstein, as noted above.

19. See Frogs 147–50 for a catalogue of grave crimes, which includes father-beating, the ultimate symbol in Aristophanes of unacceptable action. Cf. Gelzer, T., ‘Aristophanes und sein Sokrates’, MH 13 (1956), 90 n.96Google Scholar, adducing Clouds 911 and 1327 and Frogs 274. (Since in comedy nobody can die, father-beating is the most violent possible crime against the father.) Glaucon mentions adultery, murder and robbery as conventional examples of wrong action (Rep. 360b-c). Cf. Whitman (n.4 above, 176): ‘Nature is here again invoked, after the late sophistic fashion, as an anti-moral force.’

20. See n.17 above.

21. Sokrates in Clouds has no poetry in his soul, is insensitive to beauty and unverifiable truths, and misapprehends the divine nature of the Clouds. See Stark, R., ‘Sokratisches in den Vögeln des Aristophanes’, RhM 96 (1953), 83Google Scholar: ‘Sokrates … der die mousikē miβachte und die gröβten Schöpfungen der tragōidikē tekhnē nicht würdige.’ Cf. similarly Charles P. Segal, ‘Aristophanes’ Cloud-Chorus’, Arethusa 2 (1969), 143–61Google Scholar.

22. Katz, Barry (‘The Birds of Aristophanes and Polities’, Athenaeum 54 [1976], 353–81Google Scholar) suggests that the divine embassy of Poseidon, Herakles and Triballos is meant to mirror Nikias, Lamakhos and Alkibiades, ‘the curious troika originally placed in charge of the Sicilian expedition’ (353).

23. Alink, M.J., De Vogels van Aristophanes: een structuuranalyse en interpretatie (Amsterdam 1983), 318–22Google Scholar.

24. Cf. Newiger, H.-J., Metapher und Allegorie: Studien zu Aristophanes (Munich 1957), 90Google Scholar: ‘Die gewüschte körperliche Beflügelung wird also zu einer geistigen …’

25. So Arrowsmith (n.9 above). Pozzi (n.16 above) argues the opposite: Peisetairos’ marriage to Basileia marks the unexpected triumph of a pastoral ideal—an ‘idyllic and pacifist resolution’ (161).

26. Sommerstein ad 1731–36 compares Bakkhylides 20 and Theokritos 18. For rhythmical analogues and other kinds of parallels, see Pindar fr. 30, Cat. 64.305–383, Euripides Tro. 314. Hymen O, Hymenaios O! is ‘the traditional wedding chant’. ‘Alalai! Hail Paean!’ in 1763 is ‘originally an invocation of the god Paean, who came to be identified with Apollo … and here the deity invoked is certainly Peisetairos himself.’ Similarly Zimmermann (n.13 above), i.189–96.

27. Such contradiction is characteristic of Aristophanes’ extant plays. See, e.g., L.C. Edwards (n.10 above) and A.T. Edwards (n.10 above). In Clouds, for example, Aristophanes would seem to be simultaneously identifiable with and critical of ‘Unjust Speech’. Hence the difficulty in inferring with certainty his political purpose. See West, Thomas G. and West, Grace Starry, Plato and Aristophanes: Four Texts on Sokrates (Ithaca and London 1984), 29–37Google Scholar and ad loc.