The geese with their flat feet trod the mortar, and the pelicans with their saw-bills were the carpenters. The name fixed upon for this new metropolis is “Cloud-Cuckoo-Town”—the first recorded “castle in the air.” It must be the place, Euelpides thinks, where some of those great estates lie which he has heard certain friends of his in Athens boast of. It appears to be indeed a very unsubstantial kind of settlement; for Iris, the messenger of the Immortals, who has been despatched from heaven to inquire after the arrears of sacrifice, quite unaware of its existence and its purpose, dashes through the airy blockade immediately after its building. She is pursued, however, by a detachment of light cavalry—hawks, falcons, and eagles—and brought upon the stage as prisoner, in a state of great wrath at the indignity put upon her,—wrath which is by no means mollified by the sarcasms of Peisthetærus on the flaunting style and very pronounced colours of her costume as goddess of the Rainbow.
The men seem well inclined to the new ruling powers, and many apply at once to be furnished with wings. But the state of things in the celestial regions soon gets so intolerable, owing to the stoppage of all communication with earth and its good things, that certain barbarian deities, the gods of Thrace, who are—as an Athenian audience would readily understand—of a very carnal and ill-mannered type, break out into open rebellion, and threaten mutiny against the supremacy of Jupiter, unless he can come to some terms with this new intermediate power. Information of this movement is brought by Prometheus—here, as in the tragedians, the friend of man and the enemy of Jupiter—who comes secretly to Peisthetærus (getting under an umbrella, that Jupiter may not see him) and advises him on no account to come to any terms with that potentate which do not include the transfer into his possession of the fair Basileia (sovereignty), who rules the household of Olympus, and is the impersonation of all good things that can be desired. In due time an embassy from the gods in general arrives at the new city, sent to treat with the Birds. The Commissioners are three: Neptune, Hercules (whose appetite for good things was notorious, and who would be a principal sufferer by the cutting off the supplies), and a Thracian god—a Triballian—who talks very bad Greek indeed, and who has succeeded in some way in getting himself named on the embassy, to the considerable disgust of Neptune, who has much trouble in making him look at all respectable and presentable.
“Nep. There’s Nephelococcugia! that’s the town,
The point we’re bound to with our embassy.
(Turning to the Triballian.)
But you! what a figure have ye made yourself!
What a way to wear a mantle! slouching off
From the left shoulder! Hitch it round, I tell ye,
On the right side. For shame—come—so; that’s better;
These folds, too, bundled up; there, throw them round
Even and easy,—so. Why, you’re a savage,
A natural-born savage.—Oh, democracy!
What will it bring us to, when such a ruffian
Is voted into an embassy!
Trib. (to Neptune, who is pulling his dress about). Come, hands off,
Hands off!
Nep. Keep quiet, I tell ye, and hold your tongue,
For a very beast! in all my life in heaven,
I never saw such another. Hercules,
I say, what shall we do? What should you think?
Her. What would I do? what do I think? I’ve told you
Already—I think to throttle him—the fellow,
Whoever he is, that’s keeping us blockaded.
Nep. Yes, my good friend; but we were sent, you know,
To treat for a peace. Our embassy is for peace.
Her. That makes no difference; or if it does,
It makes me long to throttle him all the more.”—(F.)
Hercules, ravenous as he always is, and having been kept for some time on very short commons, is won over by the rich odour of some cookery in which he finds Peisthetærus, now governor of the new state, employed on their arrival. He is surprised to discover that the roti consists of birds, until it is explained to him that they are aristocrat birds, who have, in modern phrase, been guilty of conspiring against democracy. This brief but bitter satire upon this Bird-Utopia is thrown in as it were by the way, quite casually; but one wonders how the audience received it. Hercules determines to make peace on any terms; and when Neptune seems inclined to stand upon the dignity of his order, and taunts his brother god with being too ready to sacrifice his father’s rights, he draws the Triballian aside, and threatens him roundly with a good thrashing if he does not give his vote the right way. Having secured his majority of votes by this powerful argument—a kind of argument by no means peculiar to aerial controversies, but familiar alike to despots and demagogues in all times—Hercules concludes on behalf of the gods the truce with the Birds. Jupiter agrees to resign his sceptre to them, on condition that there is no further embargo on the sacrifices, and to give up to Peisthetærus the beautiful Basileia; and in the closing scene she appears in person, decked as a bride, riding in procession by the side of Peisthetærus, while the Chorus chant a half-burlesque epithalamium. “Plausible” has won the sovereignty, but of a very unsubstantial kingdom—if that be the moral of the play.
Süvern contends, in his very ingenious Essay on this comedy, that the fantastic project in which the Birds are persuaded by Peisthetærus to engage is intended to represent the ultimate designs of Alcibiades in urging the expedition of the Athenians to Sicily,—no less than the subjugation of Italy, Carthage, and Libya, and obtaining the sovereignty of the Mediterranean: by which the Spartans (the gods of the comedy) would be cut off from intercourse with the smaller states, here represented by the men. He considers that in Peisthetærus we have Alcibiades, compounded with some traits of the sophist Gorgias, whose pupil he is said to have been. Iris’s threat of the wrath of her father Jupiter—which certainly is more seriously worded than the general tone of the play—he takes to be a prognostication of the unhappy termination of the expedition, a feeling shared by many at Athens; while in the transfer of Basileia—all the real power—to Peisthetærus, and not to the Birds, he foreshadows the probable results of the personal ambition of Alcibiades. Such an explanation receives support from many other passages in the comedy, and is worked out by the writer with great pains and ability.
CHAPTER VII.
THE FROGS.
The point of the satire in this comedy is chiefly critical, and directed against the tragedian Euripides, upon whom Aristophanes is never weary of showering his ridicule. There must have been something more in this than the mere desire to raise a laugh by a burlesque of a popular tragedian, or the satisfaction of a purely literary dislike. It is probable, as has been suggested, that our conservative and aristocratic author looked upon Euripides as a dangerous innovator in philosophy as well as in literature; one of the “new school” at Athens, whom he was so fond of contrasting with the “men of Marathon.”
Bacchus, the patron of the drama, has become disgusted with its present state. He finds worse writers now in possession of the stage than Euripides; and he has resolved upon undertaking a journey to Tartarus, to bring him back to earth again. He would prefer Sophocles; but to get away from the dominions of Pluto requires a good deal of scheming and stratagem: and Sophocles is such a good easy man that he is probably contented where he is, while the other is such a clever, contriving fellow, that he will be sure to find some plan for his own escape. Remembering the success of Hercules on a similar expedition to the lower regions, Bacchus has determined to adopt the club and the lion’s skin, in order to be taken for that hero. Followed by his slave Xanthias—who comes in riding upon an ass (a kind of classical Sancho Panza), and carrying his master’s luggage—he calls upon Hercules on his way, in order to gather from him some information as to his route,—which is the best road to take, what there is worth seeing there, and especially what inns he can recommend, where the beds are reasonably clean, and free from those disagreeable bedfellows with which the Athenians of old seem to have been quite as well acquainted as any modern Londoner.
Hercules laughs to himself at the figure which his brother deity cuts in a costume so unsuited to his habits and character, and answers him in a tone of banter. Bacchus wants to know the shortest and most convenient road to the regions of the dead.
“Her. “Well,—which shall I tell ye first, now? Let me see—
There’s a good convenient road by the Rope and Noose—
The Hanging Road.
Bac. No, that’s too close and stifling.
Her. Then there’s an easy, fair, well-beaten track,
As you go by the Pestle and Mortar.
Bac. What, the Hemlock?
Her. To be sure.
Bac. That’s much too cold,—it will never do.
They tell me it strikes a chill to the legs and feet.
Her. Should you like a speedy, rapid, downhill road?
Bac. Indeed I should, for I’m a sorry traveller.
Her. Go to the Keramicus, then.
Bac. What then?
Her. Get up to the very top of the tower—
Bac. What then?
Her. Stand there and watch when the Race of the Torch begins;
And mind, when you hear the people cry ‘Start, start!’
Then start at once with ’em.
Bac. Me? Start? Where from?
Her. From the top of the tower to the bottom.
Bac. No, not I.
It’s enough to dash my brains out! I’ll not go
Such a road upon any account.”—(F.)