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Birds

Name: Birds
Author: Aristophanes
ISBN: 9781420926453

by Aristophanes

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Overview

Birds is generally recognized as one of Aristophanes' masterpieces, for its imaginative plot (it is the source of the word 'Cloudcuckooland') and its charming and original lyrics. This is an abridgement of the widely acclaimed full-length edition of Birds, published in 1995, which was the first comprehensive edition in any language. The abridged version retains all the material designed to help the less advanced or less specialist student of Greek to translate, understand, and enjoy the play. It preserves the notes on staging, but the metrical, textual, and ornithological problems are dealt with more summarily, and purely illustrative parallels are omitted. The Introduction covers more concisely the same ground as that of the full-length edition, but omits the detailed discussions of the individual manuscripts and their interrelations.

Synopsis

Aristophanes's "The Birds" is one of the great dramatic comedies from all of classical antiquity. It is the story of Euelpides and Pisthetaerus, two old Athenians, who are disgusted with the litigiousness, wrangling and sycophancy of their countrymen, and resolve upon quitting Attica. Having heard of the fame of Epops (the hoopoe), sometime called Tereus, and now King of the Birds, they determine, under the direction of a raven and a jackdaw, to seek from him and his subject birds a city free from all care and strife.