SYLLECTA CLASSICA 22 (2011): 1–20

RE-EROTICIZING THE HOOPOE: TEREUS IN

ARISTOPHANES’ BIRDS

Daniel Holmes

Abstract: In Aristophanes’ Birds the character Tereus plays a pivotal

role in persuading the bird chorus to hear Peisetairus’ plan for found-
ing a powerful bird-polis. One must ask how Peisetairus achieves
his initial persuasion of Tereus, who has happily left behind the
violent tyranny of his tragic role, to take on the gods and jeopar-
dize his tranquility. Unlike Dobrov and others, who argue that the
comic Tereus is a complete inversion of the tragic character from
Sophocles’ Tereus, I argue that Aristophanes depicts a comic Tereus
who shows from the beginning latent tyrannical and, in particular,
erotic qualities that Peisetairus exploits and who thus provides the
bridge for erotic human beings to establish an imperial, aerial polis
among the contentedly self-sufficient birds.*

Aristophanes’ Birds depicts the progress of a fugitive and aged Athe-
nian, Peisetairus, from desolate isolation to lordship of the universe.
Moving ever upward in his ambitious and constantly developing project,
he wins over by different means the hoopoe, Tereus, then the chorus of
birds, human beings and, finally, the gods. For some the accomplish-
ment of this grandiose fantasy reflects the buoyant mood in Athens at
the height of its powers in 414 B.C., with its generals in Sicily plan-
ning to attack Syracuse (Thuc. 6.71.2) and the Athenian people voting
*
I owe thanks to Jenny Strauss Clay and Stephanie McCarter for reading and improving
on earlier drafts of this article. The text of Aristophanes that I am using is Dunbar
(1994). All translations are mine.
2 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 22 (2011)

to send extra money and cavalry in the winter for the spring offensive
(Thuc. 6.93.4).1 Others, however, see in the fantastic bird polis created
by the clever Athenian, Peisetairus, a criticism of Athenian imperialist
policy.2 Arrowsmith, who provides the most compelling and nuanced
interpretation along these lines, regards Peisetairus’ titanic project as a
depiction of the “fantasy politics of eros” so evident in Athenian impe-
rial πολυπραγμοσύνη.3 As Arrowsmith notes, the language of desire
pervades the play. In the parabasis, Eros is celebrated as the generative
force of gods and all things (696–704). In the exodus, Eros is recalled
driving the bridal carriage of Zeus and Hera (1737–41).4 In Birds eros
1
  Rogers considered that “Athens was at the height of her power and prosperity” and
that “no shadow of the coming catastrophe dimmed the brightness of the outlook”
(xii); also Croiset 126–31; Handel 317–20; Dover 145–6; Sommerstein 4–5 (with
some reservations); Dunbar 5–6; MacDowell 227–8. Slater, on the other hand, believes
that Aristophanes’ happy and fantastic creation here is a consolation to the Athenians
for the price they have had to pay for the war and its effect upon Athenian society
and democracy (75–94).
2
  Some have tried to find allegorical correlations between Birds and contemporary
figures concerned with the Athenian empire and in particular the Sicilian expedition,
beginning with Suvern; but most recently see Katz, and to a lesser degree, Henderson.
Vickers, on the other hand, argues that Peisetairus is Alcibiades in Sparta (bird-land)
convincing the Spartans to take on the Athenians (Olympians) (267–99). Against
these allegorical interpretations, see, for example, the arguments of MacDowell
222–3. That there is some thematic connection, though not directly allegorical,
with the Sicilian expedition and Athenian imperialism is maintained, for example,
by Turato 115–18; Solomos 178–9; Newiger. For Peisetairus as a negative character
who represents the moral and political degeneration in Athenian society, cf. Nicev;
Bowie 168–72; Hubbard.
3
  Arrowsmith (1973) 140–43. Thus, the hero’s relations with the birds are “not a
set of topical allusions to the Sicilian expedition, but the whole process by which the
fantastic imperial city of Athens had developed from a traditional Greek polis…into
the monstrous, tyrant-city of Hellas” (140). The city of birds represents at first “an
Athens untempted by Eros … still at one with the world around it … Then, under
the blandishments of political suasion, the Birds become estranged from apragmosune
and hesychia; they are tempted by a dream of Eros” (142–3).
4
  For further references see Arrowsmith 130–133; according to him the protagonist
takes with him “the corrosive, ineradicable strain of a national – and for Aristophanes,
I believe, a generically human – character. And their motive is, as they say, Eros” (126).
 HOLMES: RE-EROTICIZING THE HOOPOE 3

is a fundamentally and uniquely human (and, anthropomorphically,

Olympian) trait that invades the quiet and contentedly self-sufficient
bird life.5 Being largely in agreement with Arrowsmith’s diagnosis of
the underlying impetus of the main character,6 I wish here to look at
Peisetairus’ first step into the idyllic realm of the birds, a genus by nature
hostile to human beings (334–5; 370; 374). That is, I will trace how he
persuades Tereus, the hoopoe and former tragic tyrant, specifically of
Sophocles’ play (100), to join him in radically changing the birds’ way
of life and founding a bird polis.
Other studies recognize the importance of reading Tereus’ charac-
ter in the light of what we can gather from the extant remains of the
Sophoclean original.7 Dobrov argues that Aristophanes plays with the
Sophoclean figure by constantly reversing and rejecting his tragic human
past; he is from start to finish, in Dobrov’s terms, a “comic contrafact.”
While I do agree with Dobrov that much of the humor of the initial

5
  Since Arrowsmith’s article an enormous amount of scholarship has appeared on the
concept and polyvalency of eros in classical Greece and, in particular, on the rhetorical
and political use of the term. For a good summary see Ludwig 7–23, with bibliography
at 9 n. 10; also Wohl; Scholtz. Ludwig marks out certain parameters for the term: “Eros
tends to be reserved for situations in which the agent already has his basic needs
met … Indeed eros is often used to describe situations in which the agent gambles more
basic goods, risking life or limb in an attempt to obtain a beautiful object of dubious
material or practical value … Eros occurs in cases in which the desire, whether sexual
or not, becomes obsessional and the subject of desire becomes willing to devote nearly
all of his or her life, time, or resources to achieving the goal” (12–13).
6
  Unlike Arrowsmith, I do not believe that Peisetairus is a representative of the eros
of human physis generally (154, 160); rather he represents a type, and a particularly
Athenian and sophistic type, of eros. Euelpides’ eros, for example, does not aspire to
Peisetairean heights, but rather to a self-sufficient, golden age (155–61). He leaves never
to return as soon as he realizes he has to do some work (845–6). Nor am I convinced
by the direct analogy of Cloudcuckooland as a mirror of Athens and its attempt to
capture Sicily. Like Konstan, I recognize that there are different utopian strands in
the play. That which Konstan identifies as the megalanomian, which includes the
gigantomachically erotic, is but one. See also Perkell on the “two voices” (both pastoral
and ambitious) in the play.
7
  See in particular Dobrov. Zannini Quirini 41–52 argues that Nεφελοκοκκυγία is
an uncivilized, inhuman return to a bestial age and that the barbaric and uncultured
Tereus underscores this aspect of the bird realm; also Hofmann 72–78.
4 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 22 (2011)

scene is derived from the comic deflation and inversion of the tyrannical
and violent figure from the tragedy, I argue that there is an evolution in
Tereus’ character in Birds and that it is one of re-humanizing, or what I
call, in the context of Arrowsmith’s discussion of the play, re-eroticizing.
The power of Peisetairus’ words re-awakens Tereus’ latent human and
tyrannic eros, so manifest in Sophocles’ tragedy. In order to achieve
his goal of strategically settling the bird realm Peisetairus has to find a
bridge into the pristine bird world, an ally that will betray that world
to human ambition.
We learn very early in the play that the initial goal of the two Athe-
nians is to find Tereus, the hoopoe (15). The reason they wish to find
him, set out clearly by Euelpides (47–8, 120–2),8 is to inquire whether
in his travels as a bird he has seen any ἀπράγμων city that they could
inhabit. Therefore, at this early stage, Tereus is sought not as an example
to follow in metamorphosis, but for his knowledge of what he has seen
as both a human and a bird (119). As has well been noted, the very
name Tereus (in folk etymology derived from τηρέω, “I watch”), the
hoopoe (ἔποψ, punning on the word ἐποπτής, “he who watches over”),
serves well to highlight this initial goal, and Aristophanes does not fail
to exploit it.9
The Tereus that our Athenians find turns out to be specifically
Tereus from the Athenian stage, from Sophocles’ play performed per-
haps around fifteen years earlier.10 Thus, like the Tereus of tragedy, he

8
  I follow the line allocation of Coulon (as against Marzullo and Sommerstein), who
gives the speeches addressed to the audience containing explanations of the plot, as well
as the role of chief interlocutor first of Tereus’ slave and then of Tereus to Euelpides.
For justification of this allocation see Nesselrath; Russo 149; Corsini. I argue that the
“re-eroticization” of Tereus begins when Peisetairus takes the leading role.
9
  Cf. in particular Griffith; Dunbar 15. This wordplay had already been exploited
by Sophocles in his tragedy, Tereus, if, following Welcker 374–88 and the majority
of scholars, we assign fr. 581 to Sophocles rather than Aeschylus (to whom Aristotle
HA 633a19ff had originally assigned it). In Birds Aristophanes takes this wordplay a
step further by punning also on the different forms of ἐπιπέτομαι (fly over). See in
particular lines 48 and 118.

  On the dating of Sophocles’ Tereus, see Calder 91; Dobrov 213 with n. 54; Radt
10

4.436.
 HOLMES: RE-EROTICIZING THE HOOPOE 5

does not speak a barbarian dialect, but good Attic.11 Of the Sophoclean
play there remain extant fifty-seven lines as well as what appears to be
a hypothesis preserved in the Oxyrynchus papyri (P.Oxy. XLII 3013).12
From these sources it is possible to delineate in broad terms the action of
the play. Of the various reconstructions of the play, I find most convinc-
ing those that treat with caution the later versions of Accius and Ovid’s
Metamorphoses. Thus the following outline of the play is most indebted
to Burnett and Sommerstein/Fitzgerald.13 Tereus, the king of Thrace,
married Procne, the daughter of Pandion, ruler of Athens, and by her
had a son, Itys. In order to console Procne’s loneliness in Thrace, Tereus
traveled to Athens to bring back her sister, Philomela. On his return
journey, however, Tereus conceived a desire for Philomela, raped her
and cut out her tongue so that she might not be able to tell others what
had happened. Tereus returned to Thrace and reported that Philomela
was dead. It is with this background that the play would have begun.
Procne laments her lot in Thrace and the death of her sister. Philomela,
however, contrives to inform Procne of Tereus’ deed by weaving the story
in words upon a robe. Upon realizing the truth, Procne and Philomela
in revenge undertake to kill Itys and to serve up his cooked remains to
Tereus. After Tereus has eaten the boy and realized what the women
have done, he pursues them. At this point, a god intervenes and tells
the audience that he has changed Procne into a nightingale, Philomela
into a swallow, and Tereus into a hoopoe.
Even from this broad outline, it is clear that Sophocles, in his adap-
tation of this myth onto the tragic stage, was not afraid to bring out its
most disturbing and horrific elements. Procne, like Euripides’ Medea,
by willingly and knowingly killing her own son, represents “the most

11
  On the absence of dialectal differences in tragedy see Hall 117–118.

  Parsons 46; Burnett 180 n. 12. That this is the hypothesis of Sophocles’ and not
12

Philocles’ play see Fitzpatrick 91.

13
  Burnett 180, who notes that Ovid’s “narrative, with its panoramic stretches of
time and place, certainly does not reflect the shape of an Attic tragedy;” Sommerstein
and Fitzgerald 147–48. See also Boemer 117, who argues that Ovid relied more on
Accius than Sophocles. The reconstructions and interpretations of Sutton 127–132;
Kiso 51–86, 139–147; and Dobrov stray too far into unsupportable assumptions,
especially as regards Dionysian elements.
6 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 22 (2011)

frightening creature a man could imagine.”14 Nevertheless, Sophocles is

able to offset the horror of her actions by creating a Tereus whose bar-
barity, impiety, lust, and ferocity “drew the women,” as Pausanias notes
(1.5.4), “into the necessity of retaliation (δίκης).”15 As the Oxyrhynchus
hypothesis makes clear, Tereus’ rape and mutilation of Philomela is not
only an act of unrestrained eros and violence, but also a breaking of the
oath and trust which Pandion, the girls’ father, had received from him.16
In this light the death and serving up of the son to the father becomes
gruesomely appropriate to a man whose actions have polluted the house
of Pandion.17 The Athenian women’s action becomes one of revenge “to
restore the honor of [Procne’s] paternal house, in retaliation against a
husband who had broken faith with her father,” and, furthermore against
a barbarian and thus performed “only in the service of right Hellenic
ways.”18 In Sophocles’ play Tereus becomes the example par excellence
14
  Burnett 181.
15
  Sommerstein and Fitzgerald (155–6) conclude that the audience of “Athenian men
would have considered Procne’s act of revenge as justifiable” and cite Demosthenes’
Funeral Oration, which praises the tribe of Pandionidae in the following way (60.28):
“The Pandionidae had inherited the tradition of Procne and Philomela, the daughters
of Pandion, who took vengeance on Tereus for his crime against them. They hold that
life is not worth living, if they do not show themselves as having the same spirit as
those women, when an outrage is committed against Greece.”

  P.Oxy. XLII 3013.16: “[Tereus] disregarded his trust (τὰ πιστά) from Pandion
16

and violated her.”

17
  Burnett (188) gives several layers to the significance of Tereus’ child-devouring
feast: “[o]n the most obvious level, when the sisters force Tereus to swallow human
flesh they make him act like what he is, a wild man from the outer regions. More
specifically the meal is appropriate to one guilty of incest, because eating human
meat stands to acceptable dining much as raping your sister-in-law does to acceptable
mating: cannibalism is a kind of dietary incest. The consumption of a son, moreover,
has a terrible suitability in the case of Tereus, the oath breaker and author of sexual
violence, because with this action he destroys himself and his progeny, eating up his
chance to have grandsons. He, the cutter of Philomela’s tongue, performs a kind of
self-castration by devouring what would have given him futurity. And finally, with
this feast Procne gives back to her faithless husband the product of her own misplaced
faith, returning her son to his source.”
18
  Burnett 178–191.
 HOLMES: RE-EROTICIZING THE HOOPOE 7

of the barbaric king or tyrant.19 Such a conclusion can be further drawn

from the emphases and innovations evident in the play. In traditional
mythology Tereus was not Thracian but either Megarian (Pausanias
1.41.8) or from Phocian Daulis (Thucydides 2.29.3, Strabo 9.423).20
Sophocles’ choice of setting thus gives the playwright many opportunities
to press home the Greek-barbarian antithesis. Furthermore, though the
cutting of the rape victim’s tongue is perhaps traditional,21 Sophocles’
famous use of the “voice of the shuttle” (Aristotle, Poetics, 1454b16)
to reveal the crime to Procne via woven “γράμματα” (schol. Ar. Birds
212.6) or written words was an innovation.22 In this way, Sophocles is
able to have the Greek and literate Procne safely read the contents of
the woven robe in the presence of illiterate Thracian retainers or even
of Tereus himself. Finally, in traditional mythology, Tereus had been
transformed by the god into a hawk (as, for example, Aesch. Supp. 62)
and not into a hoopoe. As Aristophanes’ Tereus tells us, it was Sophocles
who “mutilated” him in this way (110–111). Sophocles thus chooses for
Tereus’ metamorphosis not the more familiar example of aggression, the
hawk (as, for example, Hesiod’s hawk and nightingale [Op. 202–212]),
but a more bizarre bird, the hoopoe. The deus ex machina at the end of
the play describes this bird as skittishly aggressive (fr. 581) – it is bold
(θρασύς) in its full panoply (παντευχία) (2–3), and will always go “in
hatred of these women” (9); it will live in deserted woods and crags (10),
and, as a strange twist, will in the spring take on the form of the hawk
to return again to a hoopoe in summer.23
As Hall has argued, the depiction of barbarian tyranny in Attic
tragedy served these poets as one of the most common and effective
counterpoints for the affirmation of Athenian democracy and of Greek

19
  On the terms βασιλεύς and τύραννος in Greek tragedy, see the appraisal of Hall
(210).

  See also Burnett 179 n. 7; Hall 104 n. 9. On the contemporary political implications
20

of the Thracian setting see Zacharia.

21
  Cf. West on WD 568; but see also the cautionary remarks of Burnett 184 n. 24.
22
  Dobrov 204–205; Burnett 185–186.

  The hoopoe has various other strange and, in eastern cultures, mystical traits (see
23

Thompson 95–100).
8 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 22 (2011)

values generally.24 Tereus appears as a stereotypical example of such a

barbarian tyrant. The action of the drama arises out of the complete lack
of control of the passions of the king.25 Going against his pledge both to
Pandion and his wife, he rapes Philomela. As has often been pointed out,
tyranny is especially characterized in the Greek mind by overpowering
and often bizarre erotic impulses;26 and, as Benardete notes, Herodotus
only uses the term eros of kings and tyrants.27 Tereus, by incestuously
raping his sister-in-law, undermines the bonds of his oikos, and is repaid
in kind by the two Athenian women; he literally devours his own oikos.
Likewise the tyrant’s appetite is depicted in Greek literature as a kind of
cannibalism that devours those around it. Alcaeus says of Pittacus that
he “devours the city” (70.7 Voigt) and that “this belly made no reckon-
ing with his thumos, but easily trod his oaths underfoot and devours
the city” (129.23 Voigt). The tyrant’s appetites are insatiably destructive
both of the city and ultimately of himself and his own.28
To return to Birds, when we hear that our two Athenians have set
out to find Tereus, we may infer that the audience would recall one of
the most barbarous, hybristic and violent of kings depicted on the Attic
stage. At the same time, however, they do not seek Tereus, the king, but

  Hall 154–159, 192–200; for example, “it is in the contrast drawn between
24

democracy and despotism that the most conscious and powerful contrasts between
Hellene and barbarian are drawn in tragedy as elsewhere” (192).
25
  Cf. the later depiction of Tereus in Accius: Tereus indomito more atque animo barbaro
/ conspexit in eam; amore vecors flammeo, / depositus, facinus pessimum ex dementia /
confingit (frs. 639–42, Warmington).
26
  See in particular Catenacci, chapter 3, “L’eros,” 142–170; Ludwig 121–169; Hartog
330; Hall 208, who cites Euripides (fr. 850): “tyranny is besieged on all sides by terrible
desires (deinois erosin);” Wohl 215–270. See also the description of the ἐπιθυμίαι of
the tyrant in Book 9 of Plato’s Republic, as those which are usually felt in sleep, but in
the tyrant are manifested in real life, including rape, incest and parricide (571c–d).
27
  Benardete 137–8. As Periander’s daughter says (Herodotus 3.53): Τυραννὶς χρῆμα
σφαλερόν, πολλοὶ δὲ αὐτῆς ἐρασταί εἰσι (Tyranny is a precarious thing, and many
are its lovers). Cf. also Archilochus (22.3): “I do not desire (ἐρέω) a mighty tyranny.”
28
  Compare also the soul which, in the myth of Er of Plato’s Republic, chooses the
greatest tyranny and therein sees “eating his own children” as well as other horrors
(619b–c).
 HOLMES: RE-EROTICIZING THE HOOPOE 9

specifically Tereus the hoopoe, the metamorphosed bird of the end of

Sophocles’ play. We may well infer that the audience’s curiosity would
have been highly piqued as to what Aristophanes would do with this
bizarre metamorphosis.
The hoopoe announces his arrival with a paratragic line: “Open the
wood (ὕλην, comically replacing the expected πύλην “gate”) in order
that I might come forth” (92). This grand announcement, said while the
wood was still closed, would then have stunningly revealed the hoopoe,
not an object of fear, but of mockery and laughter. Tereus has the crest
of a hoopoe (94), but otherwise only a “ridiculous beak” (99). He has
no wing feathers (103–104) and, coming out from a nap, he was, more
than likely, dressed only in the short tunic and thus, only very mini-
mally decked out.29 His appearance, in general, looks like no bird that
Euelpides knows except for possibly the peacock (102). Tereus, at least
at this point, has been largely robbed of his regal or tyrannic presence;
only his helmet/crest remains.
Tereus turns out to be a sanguine and helpful friend for the two
Athenians. He answers their questions and listens to what they want.
Though now in the comic form of a hoopoe, he still understands human
needs and, in particular, human desires (127–43):
TE. Ποίαν τιν’ οὖν ἥδιστ’ ἂν οἰκοῖτ’ ἂν πόλιν;
EU. ῞Οπου τὰ μέγιστα πράγματ’ εἴη τοιάδε.
Επὶ τὴν θύραν μου πρῴ τις ἐλθὼν τῶν φίλων
λέγοι ταδί: “Πρὸς τοῦ Διὸς τοὐλυμπίου
ὅπως παρέσει μοι καὶ σὺ καὶ τὰ παιδία
λουσάμενα πρῴ: μέλλω γὰρ ἑστιᾶν γάμους·
καὶ μηδαμῶς ἄλλως ποήσῃς: εἰ δὲ μή,
μή μοι τότ’ ἔλθῃς, ὅταν ἐγὼ πράττω κακῶς.”
TE. Νὴ Δία ταλαιπώρων γε πραγμάτων ἐρᾷς.
Τί δαὶ σύ;
PI. Τοιούτων ἐρῶ κἀγώ.
TE. Τίνων;
PI. ῞Οπου ξυναντῶν μοι ταδί τις μέμψεται
ὥσπερ ἀδικηθεὶς παιδὸς ὡραίου πατήρ:
“Καλῶς γέ μου τὸν υἱόν, ὦ στιλβωνίδη,
εὑρὼν ἀπιόντ’ ἀπὸ γυμνασίου λελουμένον
οὐκ ἔκυσας, οὐ προσεῖπας, οὐ προσηγάγου,
οὐκ ὠρχιπέδισας, ὢν ἐμοὶ πατρικὸς φίλος.”
TE. ῏Ω δειλακρίων σύ, τῶν κακῶν οἵων ἐρᾷς.

29
  For Tereus’ costuming see Dunbar 94, 103, and Gelzer 199.
10 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 22 (2011)

TE: So what sort of city would you most like to live in?
EU: Where the greatest troubles are of this sort: one of
my friends would come to my door in the morning
and say,“By Olympian Zeus, see to it that you bathe
your children and come to my place early. I’m
going to celebrate a wedding. And don’t do otherwise; if
you don’t, then don’t come to me when I’m in trouble.”
TE: By Zeus, such wretched troubles you desire.
And what about you?
PE: I desire the same sort of thing.
TE: Like what?
PE: A place where the father of a choice young
boy would meet me and complain like
this, as though he’d been done some
wrong: “How finely you treat my son,
Stilbonides! Coming upon him as he
left the gymnasium after bathing, you
didn’t kiss him, or address him, or hug him
or grab his balls, and you an old family friend.”
TE: Poor you for your wretchedness, such ills you
desire.

After each of the two Athenians describes his ideal town the hoopoe cries
(135): “By Zeus, such terrible troubles you desire (ἐρᾷς),” or (143): “Poor
you for your wretchedness, such ills you desire (ἐρᾷς).” These lines are
usually taken as ironic, implying something like “what wonderful things
you desire.”30 But knowing the story of Tereus and his punishment, we
might suggest that he really does pity them. Euelpides describes a situ-
ation in which one of his friends invites him to his home to celebrate
giving away his daughter to a new home.31 As noted earlier, it was, among
other things, the breaking of this very oath between father and son-in-
law that underscored Tereus’ barbarity and led to his own tragic fate.
30
  Against the regular view that these are ironic see Dunbar 135: “Tereus’s tone is at
first surprised, then condescendingly sympathetic. This is more likely than the view…
that it is ironical, which would be less amusing.”
31
  Dunbar (132) argues that from the context it cannot be ascertained whether the
feast described is a father giving away his daughter or a bridegroom celebrating a new
wife. Given that Euelpides is described as an old man and that Peisetairus’ subsequent
and mirroring description of his “desires” also involves a father and his child, it is much
more likely that Aristophanes had the former in mind.
 HOLMES: RE-EROTICIZING THE HOOPOE 11

We might imagine that Aristophanes wished to subtly allude to Tereus’

own tragic feast and the “bathing” of his children. Peisetairus, in turn,
wants the sort of place where, with impunity, he might seduce the child
of a father to whom he has ties of kin (πατρικὸς φίλος). Here too the
fate of Sophocles’ Tereus provides one of the most conspicuous tragic
examples of the consequences for putting one’s own erotic desires before
one’s duty to the house of a “family friend” – in this case, his father in
law, Pandion.32 In any case, it is Tereus, the bird-man, who emphatically
and sympathetically diagnoses the problems of our Athenians as eros.
In contrast to these erotic longings of human beings, Tereus goes on
to describe bird life as free from the constant longing for more (155–61).
EU. Οὗτος δὲ δὴ τίς ἐσθ’ ὁ μετ’ ὀρνίθων βίος;
Σὺ γὰρ οἶσθ’ ἀκριβῶς.
TE. Οὐκ ἄχαρις εἰς τὴν τριβήν·
οὗ πρῶτα μὲν δεῖ ζῆν ἄνευ βαλλαντίου.
EU. Πολλήν γ’ ἀφεῖλες τοῦ βίου κιβδηλίαν.
TE. Νεμόμεσθα δ’ ἐν κήποις τὰ λευκὰ σήσαμα
καὶ μύρτα καὶ μήκωνα καὶ σισύμβρια.
EU. ῾Υμεῖς μὲν ἆρα ζῆτε νυμφίων βίον.

EU. What is this life with birds like? For you know it well.
TE. It suits me very nicely. First of all here you must live without a
wallet.
EU: You have taken a lot of counterfeit out of life.
TE: And we feed in gardens on white sesame and myrtleberries and
poppies and mint.
EU: Well, you live the life of newlyweds.

Bird life is a life of self-sufficiency. They feed in gardens on the free and
spontaneous abundance of good things. Because there is no scarcity in
the gardens there is no need for money, no counterfeit, no competition
for wealth. Clearly Euelpides likes the description even more so because
of the pun on μύρτα (female genitalia) and because the plants mentioned

32
  A strange aspect of both of the speeches is the fact that both mention the bathing
of children (132, 140). In part, this is an example of the comic device of capping.
Peisetairus pushes Euelpides’ desire to attend a party with his recently washed children
further, by suggesting his own pederastic desires: he also likes boys that have just bathed,
but from the gymnasium. But I would also tentatively propose that in Sophocles’
Tereus, Procne may at some stage have gruesomely suggested to Tereus that she has or
will “bathe” their son Itys, referring to the boiling of their son for the stew.
12 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 22 (2011)

are those used in wedding festivals.33 But Euelpides is no bird; he is hu-

man and thus erotic. Tereus, on the other hand, has found in this life a
respite from his hyper-erotic life on the Sophoclean stage. In this world,
he now lives happily with Procne.
Within fifty lines of uttering this eulogy of bird life, however, Tereus
will be jubilantly shouting ἰοὺ, ἰού (193) in support of Peisetairus’ plan
to create an imperial polis in the sky that exacts taxes from the gods
and ruthlessly rules over men. The question is how Peisetairus brings
about this startling change in the hoopoe. The potentiality of such a
metamorphosis was hinted at earlier in the description of Tereus’ bird
life, not by the hoopoe, but his slave bird. Euelpides is, quite rightly,
surprised to learn that a bird should have a slave. The only slave bird
he has seen is one that has been defeated in a cockfight (70–71), that
is, one forced by humans to fight. One never sees a bird actually serve
another in nature. To have a slave implies having needs and desires that
cannot readily or easily be fulfilled. In nature birds are seen to feed on
what they happen to chance upon around them; they do not require or,
it appears, desire the assistance of other birds. In reply to this question
the slave bird puts forward his own hypothesis (75–79):

EU. Δεῖται γὰρ ὄρνις καὶ διακόνου τινός;

ΘE. Οὗτός γ’, ἅτ’, οἶμαι, πρότερον ἄνθρωπός ποτ’ ὤν.
Τοτὲ μὲν ἐρᾷ φαγεῖν ἀφύας Φαληρικάς,
τρέχω ἀφύας ἐγὼ λαβὼν τὸ τρύβλιον·
ἔτνους δ’ ἐπιθυμεῖ, δεῖ τορύνης καὶ χύτρας,
τρέχω ‘πὶ τορύνην.

EU: Does a bird actually need a servant?

SE: Yes, this one does, because, as I think, being once a human
being, sometimes he gets a desire to eat Phalerian white-bait, and
I grab a bowl and run for whitebait; or he has an appetite for pea
soup, he needs a ladle and pot – I run for the ladle.

Unlike regular birds who feed off what is at hand, sometimes Tereus,
because he was once human, feels an eros for what he does not have at
hand and for which a more than simple effort would have to be made
– he would have either to journey to get the ingredients or to find a
man-made utensil with which to eat it. The nature of humans is such
33
  Cf. Dunbar 159–60.
 HOLMES: RE-EROTICIZING THE HOOPOE 13

that subsistence is not always enough. One’s eros impels one to seek
what one lacks. This eros of Tereus is here as evident in Aristophanes as
it must have been in Sophocles. But Aristophanes shows us how meta-
morphosis, both from a man to a bird, and from the tragic stage onto the
comic stage, has affected him. His eros, once for incest and acts of hybris,
characteristic of a tyrant, has become an eros for whitebait and soup.
He is neither his old, tyrannical self, nor yet completely a bird. Thus,
he is the perfect intermediary between Peisetairus and the bird chorus.
After Tereus’ description of bird life, the trajectory of the play is in-
verted. We might have expected a play like Pherecrates’ Agrioi in which
Athenians join a pre-political society only to learn to their detriment
what such a society is like, or like Crates’ Theria in which animals rule
and provide for humans a golden-age but meat-free existence. The op-
posite occurs. Peisetairus’ plan is, on the contrary, to make birds political
animals. Once Peisetairus introduces the possibility of a polis of birds,
the equation changes. Within a polis the boundaries are demarcated and
hierarchies are necessarily set up.34 At the same time, being a member
of a polis sets the individual off against members of other poleis. One
can strive for power not only privately within one’s own polis, but also
in common against another polis. By reintroducing Tereus to the polis,
Peisetairus thereby reintroduces the hoopoe, Tereus, to that eros which
brought the human Tereus to power in Thrace.
Aristophanes introduces this scene in terms that clearly mark it off
as a conquest of persuasion: (163–4)

ΠΙ. ῏Η μέγ’ ἐνορῶ βούλευμ’ ἐν ὀρνίθων γένει,
καὶ δύναμιν ἣ γένοιτ’ ἄν, εἰ πίθοισθέ μοι.

ΕΠ. Τί σοι πιθώμεσθ’;
ΠΙ. ῞Ο τι πίθησθε;

PI: I see a mighty plan in the race of birds, and also power which
would arise if you should be persuaded by me.
EP: In what are we to be persuaded by you?
PI: In what are you to be persuaded?

34
  Cf. Konstan 9–10, who notes that in the prologue Aristophanes had created on the
stage a place where “compass-directions do not apply…Playfully, Aristophanes evokes
a mysterious indeterminacy, a kind of metaphysical lostness, about the realm of the
birds.” Once Peisetairus suggests founding a demarcated city there arises for the birds
“a different way of conceiving space as territorial, a field marked by limits of property.”
14 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 22 (2011)

This emphatic tripling of the root πιθ- leads into Peisetairus’ first act
of persuasion on the stage. In the first place, Peisetairus gets Tereus to
look at bird-life from the point of view of human beings (164–171).
PI. ῞Ο τι πίθησθε; πρῶτα μὲν
μὴ περιπέτεσθε πανταχῇ κεχηνότες
ὡς τοῦτ’ ἄτιμον τοὔργον ἐστίν. Αὐτίκα
ἐκεῖ παρ’ ἡμῖν τοὺς πετομένους ἢν ἔρῃ
“Τίς ἐστιν οὗτος;” ὁ Τελέας ἐρεῖ ταδί·
“ἄνθρωπος ὄρνις ἀστάθμητος, πετόμενος,
ἀτέκμαρτος, οὐδὲν οὐδέποτ’ ἐν ταὐτῷ μένων.”
TE. Νὴ τὸν Διόνυσον εὖ γε μωμᾷ ταυταγί.

PI: In what are you to be persuaded? First don’t fly about everywhere
gaping, as this is a deed that lacks honor. For example, there
among us, if you ask of the flighty people, “Who is this?” Teleas
will reply, “The man is a bird, unstable, flighty, unpredictable,
never remaining in the same place.”
TE: By Dionysus, you’re right to reproach us for this.

For human beings bird life is undirected and unproductive – they fly all
about freely gaping, but there is no τίμη or honor in it. A bird among
men is a term for the flighty and unstable. Thus Peisetairus’ first act is
to unsettle Tereus’ bird-view of the world and to reintroduce Tereus to
the human perspective in which individuals are distinguished in terms
of honor and shame.
Once Peisetairus has convinced Tereus of the possibility of the
metamorphosis of the polos into a polis, he goes on to offer Tereus yet
another incentive. The city’s position, in-between heaven and earth,
means that the birds will be able to gain the power of life and death
over men and gods (185–6), and therefore, will be able to exact taxes
from them. Like the Athenian empire, whose great wealth came from
the taxes (φοροί) it often ruthlessly exacted from its allies, so the bird
empire will tax an even wealthier race: the gods themselves. They will
be able to starve the gods into submission with a “Melian famine” and
rule humans like locusts, the bugs that birds eat. We are reminded of
the tyrant that devours his subjects. Peisetairus offers Tereus not merely
power, but power in its most ambitious and overreaching form. It is at
this point that Tereus gives his jubilant cries of ἰοὺ, ἰού (193). Peise-
tairus’ plan offers him opportunities of honor, power, and wealth that
could not exist in the bird realm as it is. Peisetairus carefully sets up an
 HOLMES: RE-EROTICIZING THE HOOPOE 15

argument that sets in motion a process of re-humanization or, at least,

re-eroticization of the hoopoe, former tyrant of Thrace. Unlike in his
later persuasion of the bird chorus, Peisetairus need not, in persuading
Tereus, mention the justice of the act, nor prove or even mention the
ancient divinity of the birds. He plays upon the latent eros in the man-
bird. Merely proving the possibility of power and wealth is enough for
one who formerly enjoyed it.
For the audience this metamorphosis would have become stunningly
and visually apparent when Tereus, after having gone into his thicket to
summon the birds,35 returns to the stage, but now, not in his pajamas
but, as evidenced by lines 434–5, decked out in full panoply, as he holds
off the birds from attacking the Athenians and manages to persuade the
birds to listen to the clever human beings, the birds’ avowed “natural
enemies” (370–72). Knowing the birds as he does, he nowhere threat-
ens the birds nor mentions Peisetairus’ brutal plan for power over gods
and men. Rather Tereus quickly identifies himself to them as a φίλος
(313) who brings a φίλος λόγος (316) to them, and, like an orator, he
speaks of both the expediency and justice of the plan (316, 384). In an
attempt to calm the fears of the birds he calls the two men “lovers of our
society (ἐρασταὶ τῆσδε τῆς ξυνουσίας, 324). This description accords
well with Tereus’ earlier diagnosis of the two Athenians’ erotic condi-
tion, and is re-iterated by him later (413–14; cf. 1279). In the context
of deliberative rhetoric, however, it points to the well-worn demagogic
ploy so humorously treated in Knights. There, Paphlagon, a caricature of
the demagogue, Cleon, vies with the sausage seller as the lover of Demos
as he states: “I love you, Demos, and I am your lover (ἐραστής)” (732).
This is no mere comic device, but points to a regular part of Cleon’s
and other demagogues’ oratorical vocabulary.36 Later in that play, the
35
  The beautiful song summoning the nightingale and describing reciprocity between
bird song and the gods (209–222) stands in stark contrast to the preceding plan to tax and
starve out the gods. The audience is thereby made aware of the loss that will accompany
the foundation of the bird polis. On the two voices in the play see Perkell.
36
  Connor 99–101. See also Ludwig 143–5. Wohl 30–124 argues that the “fiction”
established by Pericles, as evidenced in Thucydides’ Funeral Oration, that the demos of
Athens are erastai of the city (that is, manly, active, elite, potent lovers) is then debased by
Cleon who turns the political relationship into one of prostitution. Scholtz 43–70 argues
that the use of the erastes motif in Knights is comic hyperbole of a non-pederastic philia
motif evident in oratory. He does not, however, appear to take into account its appearance
in other plays. One would assume that Aristophanes would not keep using the same joke
if the erastes motif were not used in actual oratory.
16 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 22 (2011)

sausage-seller rebukes Demos for being won over by just such means:
“Firstly, whenever someone said in the assembly, ‘Oh Demos, I am your
lover (ἐραστής) and I love you and am concerned for you, and I alone
look out for your interests,’ whenever someone used these preambles,
you crowed like a rooster and proudly shook your head” (1340–1344).
Furthermore, as evidenced by the Acharnians (143), such language is
used not only of citizens for the city, but also of foreigners who wanted
to show, in an overblown way, their affection for the city. By the time of
Birds, the erotic language of politics as a demagogic weapon would have
been readily recognizable, if not trite. Its desired effect is to persuade, as
Connor notes, by taking “the language of the most intense philia and
translat[ing] it to a new sphere” (96–98). Even though, as in the mouth
of the comic caricatures of Cleon or other demagogues, its connotation
is that of a person who flatters the city only to get his own way, so too
here we know that Tereus is bending the truth. Though Euelpides may
be an ἐραστής of the bird life, we know that Peisetairus, in fact, wishes
to change bird society because he sees great power in converting the
polos of birds into a polis. Unlike Euelpides, he desires what the birds
may potentially be for him, not what they are by nature.
In the agon with the birds, Tereus proves to be the vital element in
getting the chorus to listen to Peisetairus’ plan. Once the birds have
accepted the plan and Tereus has winged the two Athenians, however,
he is not heard from again. Though Tereus was necessary, once he has
performed his function he is discarded. Likewise, the initial plan that
Peisetairus put forward to Tereus is largely dropped. 37 The birds do wall
off the city and starve the gods, but the idea of charging a tax is nowhere
mentioned again. The plan will end up not as a source for greater wealth
per se for the birds (including Tereus), but as a bargaining tool by which
Peisetairus can gain the scepter and thunderbolt of Zeus for himself.
37
  Konstan deals with the complexities and contradictions apparent in the city of the
birds by identifying four different utopian threads that are wound through the play.
He labels these the anomian, the antinomian, the eunomian and the megalanomian.
Each of these strands, he argues, mirrors contradictory ideological positions in Athens
itself, and thus “the inconsistency of [Peisetairus’] characterization is a product of
the complex ideological construction of the birds’ domain…a place both social and
presocial, harmonious and divided, benign and aggressive” (16–17). I agree with
Konstan for the most part, but would argue that Peisetairus is always in constrol of
these utopian threads and offers them to different characters as they appear, only to
fulfill in the end his own desires. It is the “megalanomian” thread by which he is able
to persuade and transform Tereus.
 HOLMES: RE-EROTICIZING THE HOOPOE 17

For Peisetairus, Tereus plays a role, like Euelpides (cf. 339–40), of

a helper on his journey. Among the birds, he was one of a large dis-
organized, gaping and not πολυπράγμων flock (471). He had taught
them to speak (200), for which the birds owe him gratitude (384); but
he was no king among them.38 With an imperial polis in the air, on
the other hand, Peisetairus offers Tereus a different dream. This is the
human dream; one of honors, power and naked aggression, of ruling
men like the locusts that birds eat, or of forcing the gods to submission
or death by a “Melian famine” (186). To Tereus, Peisetairus need not
speak of justice or right, as he does to the birds, but only of the power
and means to act and succeed. For Peisetairus’ plan to succeed he had
to have a bridge between the ambitious and erotic human sphere and
the unerotic, apolitical birds. He had to find an impossible animal, an
erotic bird that would let him into the untouched garden of physis. It is
only a Tereus, a stereotypically insatiably erotic tyrant and escapee from
the tragic stage, who, metamorphosed into a bird, could be counted on
to betray the sweet life of the birds to Peisetairus’ ambitious regime.

Department of Classical Languages

Sewanee: The University of the South
735 University Ave.
Sewanee, TN 37383
daholmes@sewanee.edu

38
  Cf. Dunbar 197, who argues against the view that Tereus had become king of
the birds. As Tereus tells Peisetairus, “I would join with you in founding the city, if it
should seem good to the other birds” (197). As the birds’ teacher in language, Tereus
does have some authority among the birds: “we have always listened to you in the
past” (385). He is not, however, their king.
18 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 22 (2011)

Works Cited

Arrowsmith, W. 1973. “Aristophanes’ Birds: The Fantasy Politics of Eros.” Arion, n.s.,
1 (1973): 119–67.
Benardete, S. Herodotean Inquiries. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970.
Boemer, F. P. Ovidius Naso: Metamorphosen. Kommentar. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1976.
Bowie, A. Aristophanes: Myth, Ritual and Comedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993.
Burnett, A. Revenge in Attic and Later Tragedy. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1998.
Calder, W. M. III. “Sophocles’ Tereus: A Thracian Tragedy”. Thracia 2 (1974): 87–91.
Catenacci, C. Il Tiranno e L’eroe. Milan: B. Mondadori, 1996.
Connor, W.R. The New Politicians of Fifth-Century Athens. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1971.
Corsini, E. “Il prologo degli Uccelli di Aristofane”. In Tradizione e innovazione nella
cultura Greco da Omero all’eta ellenistica: scritti in onore di Bruno Gentili, Edited
by R. Pretagostini, 679–88. Rome: Gruppo editoriale internazionale, 1993.
Coulon, V. Aristophane, iii, Les Oiseaux, Lysistrate. Paris: Société d’édition “Les Belles
Lettres,” 1928.
Croiset, M. Aristophanes and the Political Parties at Athens. Trans. J. Loeb. New York:
Arno Press. 1909, reprint 1973.
Dobrov, G. W. “The tragic and the comic Tereus.” AJP 114 (1993):189–234.
Dover, K. J. Aristophanic Comedy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.
Dunbar, N. Aristophanes: Birds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Fitzpatrick, D. “Sophocles’ Tereus.” CQ 51 (2001): 90–101.
Gelzer, T. “Some aspects of Aristophanes’ dramatic art in the Birds.” In Oxford Read-
ings in Aristophanes, Edited by E. Segal, 194–215. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1996.
Griffith, R. D. “The Hoopoe’s Name: A Note on Birds 48.” QUUC 55 (1987): 59–63.
Hall, E. Inventing the Barbarian: Greek self-definition through tragedy. Oxford; Oxford
University Press, 1989.
Händel, P. Formen und Darstellungsweisen der aristophanischen Komödie. Heidelberg:
C. Winter, 1963.
Hartog, F. The mirror of Herodotus : the representation of the other in the writing of his-
tory. Trans. J. Lloyd. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
 HOLMES: RE-EROTICIZING THE HOOPOE 19

Henderson J.J. “Mass versus elite and the comic heroism of Peisetairos.” In The City
as Comedy. Edited by G. Dobrov, 135–48. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1997.
Hofmann, H. Mythos und Komödie: Untersuchungen zu den Vögeln des Aristophanes.
Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1976.
Katz, B. “The Birds of Aristophanes and politics.” Athenaeum 54 (1976): 353–381.
Konstan D. “The Greek polis and its negations: versions of Utopia in Aristophanes’
Birds. In The City as Comedy. Edited by G. Dobrov, 3–22. Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1997.
Ludwig, P.W. Eros and Polis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
MacDowell, D. Aristophanes and Athens: An Introduction to the Plays. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995.
Marzullo, B. “L’interlocuzione negli ‘Uccelli’ d’ Aristofane.” Philologus 114 (1970):
181–94.
Nesselrath, H-G. “Die Tücken der Sprecherverteilung: Euelpides, Peisetairos und die
ihre Rollen in der Eingangspartie der aristophanischen Vögel.” MH 53 (1996):
91–99.
Newiger, H-J. Metapher und Allegorie: Studien Zu Aristophanes. Munich: Beck, 1957.
Nicev, A. “L’enigme des Oiseaux d’Aristophane.” Euphrosune 17 (1989): 9–30.
Parsons, P.J. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, XLII. London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1974.
Perkell, C. “On the Two Voices of the Birds in Birds.” Ramus 22 (1993): 1–18.
Radt, S.L. Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, vol. 4: Sophocles 2nd ed. Gottingen: Van-
denhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999.
Rogers, B.B. The Birds of Aristophanes. London: G. Bell, 1906.
Russo, C.F. Aristophanes: An Author for the Stage. Trans. by K. Wren. London: Rout-
ledge 1994.
Scholtz, A. Concordia Discors: eros and dialogue in classical Athenian literature. Wash-
ington D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2007.
Slater N.W. “Performing the city in Birds.” In The City as Comedy. Edited by G. Dobrov,
75–94. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
Solomos, A. The Living Aristophanes. Trans. M Felheim. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1974.
Sommerstein, A.H. The Comedies . Vol. 6: Birds. Warminster: Aris and Philipps, 1987.
Sommerstein A.H. and Fitzgerald D. Sophocles. Selected Fragmentary Plays. Volume 1.
Oxford: Aris and Philipps, 2006.
20 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 22 (2011)

Sutton, D.F. The Lost Sophocles. New York: University Press of America, 1984.
Süvern, J.W. Essay on “The Birds” of Aristophanes. Trans. W. Hamilton. London: J.
Murray, 1835.
Thompson, D. W. A Glossary of Greek Birds. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936.
Turato, F. “Le leggi non scritte negli ‘Uccelli’ di Aristofane.” Atti e Memorie
dell’Accademia Patavina di Scienze, Lettere, ed Arti 84.3 (1971–72): 113–43.
Vickers, B. “Alcibiades on Stage: Aristophanes’ Birds.” Historia 38.3 (1989): 267–99.
Welcker, F.G. Die griechischen Tragoedien mit Rücksicht auf den epischen Cyclus geordnet.
Vol 1. Bonn: Weber, 1839.
West, M.L. Hesiod: Works and Days. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.
Wohl, V. Love among the ruins: the erotics of democracy in classical Athens. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2002.
Zacharia, K. “The Rock of the Nightingale; Kinship, Diplomacy, and Sophocles’Tereus.”
In Homer, Tragedy and Beyond; essays in honour of P.E. Easterlin, edited by. F.
Budelman, P.E. Easterling, P. Michelakis, 91–112. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 2001.
Zannini Quirini, B. Nephelokokkygia: La prospettiva mitica degli Uccelli di Aristofane.
Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 1987.