POET I have composed verses in honour of your Nephelococcygia, a
host of splendid dithyrambs and parthenia worthy of Simonides himself.
TROCHILUS (also reassuring himself) You're done for.
EUELPIDES We? We are mortals.

EUELPIDES Does a bird need a servant, then?
PITHETAERUS Oh! by Zeus! what a throat that little bird possesses.
He has filled the whole thicket with honey-sweet melody!

LEADER OF THE CHORUS Popopopopopo. Where is he who called me? Where
am I to find him?
EUELPIDES By Zeus! that's 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 meal-sack home
empty.

PITHETAERUS Hence, if they existed before the Earth, before the gods,
the kingship belongs to them by right of priority.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS And how are we to give them health, which belongs
to the gods?
EUELPIDES I? Not at all! I hold the son of Scellias in horror.

EPOPS (as HERALD) Hearken, ye people! Hoplites, pick up your weapons
and return to your firesides; do not fail to read the decrees of dismissal
we have posted.
PITHETAERUS A bird of Persian strain, who is everywhere proclaimed
to be the bravest of all, a true chick of Ares.
PITHETAERUS there is a King-Bird,
the wren, to whom the sacrifice of a male gnat is due before Zeus
himself even.

PITHETAERUS Can you see any bird?
PITHETAERUS To think that I should trust to this crow, which has
made me cover more than a thousand furlongs!
LEADER OF SECOND SEMI-CHORUS Is it not the most priceless gift of all, to
be winged? Look at Diitrephes! He's now the finest gilded cock
of his tribe.

PITHETAERUS Well, I suppose there's nothing to do but hear the terms
of the oracle.
(The flute is played behind
the scene, imitating the song of the nightingale.)
PITHETAERUS No, I mean my eyes.

EPOPS (in the thicket, singing) Epopopoi popoi popopopoi popoi,
here, here, quick, quick, quick, my comrades in the air; all you who
pillage the fertile lands of the husbandmen,
EPOPS Take your advice? In what way?
PITHETAERUS Get out!

PITHETAERUS Moreover, the gnats
and the gallbugs shall no longer ravage the figs; a flock of thrushes
shall swallow the whole host down to the very last.
EUELPIDES But what is the
meaning of all these crests? Have these birds come to contend for
the double stadium prize?
EUELPIDES I? Not at all! I hold the son of Scellias in horror.

EUELPIDES 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.
INFORMER What are these birds with downy feathers, who look so pitiable
to me? Tell me, oh swallow with the long dappled wings.
PITHETAERUS Or, if you like it, their place. And since it turns and
passes through the whole universe, it is called 'pole.'