Pisthetaerus: I am bursting with desire to speak; I have already mixed the dough of my address and nothing prevents me from kneading it. … Slave! bring the chaplet and water, which you must pour over my hands. Be quick!
Euelpides: Is it a question of feasting? What does it all mean?
Pisthetaerus: By Zeus, no! but I am hunting for fine, tasty words to break down the hardness of their hearts.—I grieve so much for you, who at one time were kings …
Chorus: We kings! Over whom?
Pisthetaerus: … of all that exists, firstly of me and of this man, even of Zeus himself. Your race is older than Saturn, the Titans and the Earth.
Chorus: What, older than the Earth!
Pisthetaerus: By Phoebus, yes.
Chorus: By Zeus, but I never knew that before!
Pisthetaerus: ’Tis because you are ignorant and heedless, and have never read your Aesop. ’Tis he who tells us that the lark was born before all other creatures, indeed before the Earth; his father died of sickness, but the Earth did not exist then; he remained unburied for five days, when the bird in its dilemma decided, for want of a better place, to entomb its father in its own head.
Euelpides: So that the lark’s father is buried at Cephalae.
Epops: Hence, if we existed before the Earth, before the gods, the kingship belongs to us by right of priority.
Euelpides: Undoubtedly, but sharpen your beak well; Zeus won’t be in a hurry to hand over his sceptre to the woodpecker.
Pisthetaerus: It was not the gods, but the birds, who were formerly the masters and kings over men; of this I have a thousand proofs. First of all, I will point you to the cock, who governed the Persians before all other monarchs, before Darius and Megabyzus. ’Tis in memory of his reign that he is called the Persian bird.
Euelpides: For this reason also, even today, he alone of all the birds wears his tiara straight on his head, like the Great King.
Pisthetaerus: He was so strong, so great, so feared, that even now, on account of his ancient power, everyone jumps out of bed as soon as ever he crows at daybreak. Blacksmiths, potters, tanners, shoemakers, bathmen, corn-dealers, lyre-makers and armourers, all put on their shoes and go to work before it is daylight.
Euelpides: I can tell you something about that. ’Twas the cock’s fault that I lost a splendid tunic of Phrygian wool. I was at a feast in town, given to celebrate the birth of a child; I had drunk pretty freely and had just fallen asleep, when a cock, I suppose in a greater hurry than the rest, began to crow. I thought it was dawn and set out for Alimos. I had hardly got beyond the walls, when a footpad struck me in the back with his bludgeon; down I went and wanted to shout, but he had already made off with my mantle.
Pisthetaerus: Formerly also the kite was ruler and king over the Greeks.
Epops: The Greeks?
Pisthetaerus: And when he was king, ’twas he who first taught them to fall on their knees before the kites.
Euelpides: By Zeus! ’tis what I did myself one day on seeing a kite; but at the moment I was on my knees, and leaning backwards with mouth agape, I bolted an obolus and was forced to carry my bag home empty.
Pisthetaerus: The cuckoo was king of Egypt and of the whole of Phoenicia. When he called out “cuckoo,” all the Phoenicians hurried to the fields to reap their wheat and their barley.
Euelpides: Hence no doubt the proverb, “Cuckoo! cuckoo! go to the fields, ye circumcised.”
Pisthetaerus: So powerful were the birds that the kings of Grecian cities, Agamemnon, Menelaus, for instance, carried a bird on the tip of their sceptres, who had his share of all presents.
Euelpides: That I didn’t know and was much astonished when I saw Priam come upon the stage in the tragedies with a bird, which kept watching Lysicrates to see if he got any present.
Pisthetaerus: But the strongest proof of all is, that Zeus, who now reigns, is represented as standing with an eagle on his head as a symbol of his royalty; his daughter has an owl, and Phoebus, as his servant, has a hawk.