PISTHETAERUS What are you shouting for?
EUELPIDES Why, here's another bird.
PISTHETAERUS Aye, indeed; 'tis a foreign bird too. What is this bird from beyond the mountains with a look as solemn as it is stupid?
EPOPS He is called the Mede.(1)
f(1) Aristophanes amusingly mixes up real birds with people and individuals, whom he represents in the form of birds; he is personifying the Medians here.
PISTHETAERUS The Mede! But, by Heracles, how, if a Mede, has he flown here without a camel?
EUELPIDES Here's another bird with a crest.
PISTHETAERUS Ah! that's curious. I say, Epops, you are not the only one of your kind then?
EPOPS This bird is the son of Philocles, who is the son of Epops;(1) so that, you see, I am his grandfather; just as one might say, Hipponicus,(2) the son of Callias, who is the son of Hipponicus.
f(1) Philocles, a tragic poet, had written a tragedy on Tereus, which was simply a plagiarism of the play of the same name by Sophocles. Philocles is the son of Epops, because he got his inspiration from Sophocles' Tereus, and at the same time is father to Epops, since he himself produced another Tereus.