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Tyranny in Aristophanes's Birds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2012

Wayne Ambler
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Abstract

The protagonist of Aristophanes's Birds rises from nowhere to become a tyrannos of the first order, but scholars disagree when assessing him. Do Peisetairos's impressive political gifts make him an apt example of competent rule, or does his treatment of his subjects mark him as guilty of hubris and perfidy? While documenting the distinguishing features of this remarkable ruler, it is argued that—Arrowsmith's eloquent essay notwithstanding—Aristophanes does not condemn him. Nor, however, does he recommend Peisetairos's rule, as Henderson suggests. Between these extremes is a more complex via media: if a birdlike populace is to have an empire, they must also embrace a Peisetairos. But it would not be unwise to oppose an empire at such a price, even if the Alcibidean leader who would preside over it cannot be condemned for seeking to rule in the way he imagines to be most advantageous for himself.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 74 , Issue 2 , Spring 2012 , pp. 185 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2012

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References

1 Tyrannos does not always imply the opprobrium conveyed by our use of “tyrant” and by Aristotle's sharp distinction between kingships and tyrannies (Politics 1279a32–b10), but the ominous connotations of the word are certainly present in the Birds. See especially 1071–75 and Sidwell, Keith, Aristophanes the Democrat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 239n61.

2 Translations are my own. Except where noted otherwise, I rely on the edition by Dunbar, Nan, Aristophanes: Birds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

3 Murray, G., Aristophanes: A Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933), 135–63Google Scholar; Whitman, C., Aristophanes and His Comic Hero (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), 167–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dover, K. J., Aristophanic Comedy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972)Google Scholar, 145; MacDowell, Douglas, Aristophanes and Athens (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar, 221, 227.

4 Henderson, Jeffrey, “Mass versus Elite and the Comic Heroism of Peisetairos,” in The City as Comedy, ed. Dobrov, Gregory (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 141–42Google Scholar, 145. Henderson's penultimate sentence finds that Aristophanes was wrong to point the way toward “a return to elite rule in Athens,” but pointing he was. Henderson is certainly correct to stress that Peisetairos possesses impressive political gifts, as Alcibiades also did. The challenge is to determine for whose benefit they are employed or at what price they come. I hope to resolve this question below.

5 Süvern is the acknowledged leader of those who read the Birds as an allegory and see it as a critique of the Sicilian expedition (Süvern, J. W., Essay on “The Birds” of Aristophanes, trans. Hamilton, W. R. [London: John Murray, 1835]Google Scholar). For a more contemporary reading of the Birds as a political allegory, see Vickers, Michael, “Alcibiades at Sparta: Aristophanes' Birds,” Classical Quarterly 45, no. 2 (1995): 339–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Alcibiades, see Henderson, “Mass versus Elite,” 139; for the mutilation of the Herms, see Thomas Hubbard, “Utopianism and the Sophistic City in Aristophanes,” in The City as Comedy, ed. Gregory Dobrov, 27. Hubbard is also among those who see the Birds as including a critique of the sophists or of “sophistic utopianism” (“Utopianism,” 25, 28–29). Peisetairos's manipulative speech leads to an early version of Animal Farm, as Hubbard sees it, and Aristophanes was eager to point out the dangers.

6 Arrowsmith, W. A., “Aristophanes' Birds: The Fantasy Politics of Eros,” Arion, n.s., 1, no. 1 (1973)Google Scholar: 146.

7 See also note 42 below and Strauss, Leo, Socrates and Aristophanes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 160–94Google Scholar. Strauss's commentary is rarely cited, in part because it is so elusive. It has nonetheless influenced my own reading, especially but not only with regard to the important differences between Euelpides and Peisetairos.

8 All my references to Socrates concern Aristophanes's presentation of him. Determining how this Socrates relates to the historical Socrates or the one made “young and beautiful” by Plato is beyond the scope of this article.

9 Tereus was a subject of myth and the title character of one of Sophocles's lost tragedies. For the most thorough treatment of this play, which was produced before the Birds, see Fitzpatrick, David, “Sophocles' Tereus,” Classical Quarterly, n.s., 51, no. 1 (2001): 90–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Dobrov, Gregory, “The Tragic and the Comic Tereus,” American Journal of Philology 114, no. 2 (1993): 189–234CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Peisetairos never again speaks of destroying the gods, but Prometheus later credits him with having destroyed Zeus (1514).

11 The Athenians were able to fight back against the Lacedaemonians when blockaded from Delphi in the so-called Second Sacred War of 449–48. Since it was not religious reasons that led them to fight, the Athenians were even less dependent on the gods than Peisetairos implies (cf. 556; Thucydides 1.112; Plutarch, Pericles 21).

12 LSJ, 9th ed., s.v. “presbus” (sense IV).

13 Birds 230–53. Although uncalled, one or two types of hawk do turn up among the many species of birds that arrive (303–4; 271–350). Later, at 359, Euelpides refers to birds with “crooked claws.” It appears a few tough birds may have responded to the summons even though they were not specifically invited. Later in the play, Peisetairos also shows sensitivity to important differences among bird species, for he calls fighting birds when they are needed (1246–51, 1178–81), and he objects when the priest invites ravenous birds to the sacrifices, for they quickly devour much of the sacrificial offering (889–92).

14 This theme is massively present elsewhere in Aristophanes's corpus, especially in his treatment of the Unjust Speech in the Clouds (whose victory is made easier by the laughable weaknesses of the rival speech). Consider as well Aristophanes's critiques of Socrates and Euripides as seducers away from civic traditions. Edoardo de Carli is one of the many scholars who closely follows Aristophanes's treatment of the power of rhetoric (Carli, De, Aristophane e la sofistica [Florence: Nuova Italia Editrice, 1971], esp. 26–40Google Scholar).

15 Focusing on the meter leads to a different division of this agon of the play and highlights the traditional elements of the parabasis. See Dunbar, Birds, 309. I offer my simpler division in an attempt to highlight the effect of the speech on the birds and to locate the sources of this effect. I here follow the line attributions in the older version of the Oxford text, Aristophanis Comoediae, ed. Hall, F. W. and Geldart, W. M. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1900)Google Scholar.

16 Although they sometimes do occur without religious connotations, anatithēmi (“offer up”) and sōtēr (“savior”) often carry overtones of religious dedication. The former was used of votive gifts to a god, and the latter was an epithet of gods and heroes, especially Zeus.

17 Oddly, they do not ask to be assigned works that require courage, yet this is the virtue the lack of which caused their fathers to lose their kingship, at least as they surmise (kakē, 541). Perhaps the birds sense they too lack it, but how can they expect to triumph without it? For another possible surmise about why their fathers were defeated, see Strauss, Socrates and Aristophanes, 167.

18 Dunbar notes that Peisetairos is “strikingly inconsistent” in the way he characterizes the “ethical status” of his project (Birds, 8). If inconsistent with each other, however, his statements are tailored to the audiences to which they are addressed. He uses a moral argument with the birds, who adopt it as their own; the promise of power and the destruction of the gods to Tereus, who is excited by the plan's bold deviousness; intimidation with Iris, who could never be persuaded the birds really have a right to rule; and euphemistic suggestions that his reforms will help the gods to Heracles, who is dumb enough to be seduced by them, at least when a bribe of birds' meat sweetens the deal.

19 Strauss, Socrates and Aristophanes, 167. Peisetairos never quite calls the revolution just; and his conclusion that it is “right” (orthōs, 478; cf. orthēn, 1) may be weakened by being put in the form of a question, resting on comic hypotheses, not an affirmation. At 631–35, the birds express their readiness to join Peisetairos on the condition that the cause is a just and pious one. The birds appear to care that their revolution should be a just one, but whether for intellectual or moral reasons, they allow themselves to be persuaded easily that it is.

20 Thucydides 5.89, 105.

21 His later references to justice at 1222 (to Iris) and at 1598–99 (to the three gods) are so laughably self-serving as to show more clearly than no reference at all that he is not guided by it.

22 This is not the very first time that reputation in the eyes of men proves important to a bird (or man-bird): cf. 164–71.

23 As Tereus had also done, Peisetairos hints that rule also brings tangible benefits (513, 517–19), but the birds seem generally less needy of these than the gods are. The gods' need for men to supply their nourishment is the core of the play, and their hunger for sex with mortal women is also indicated (cf. 610–26).

24 Cf. 1073; Clouds 830; Romer, F. E., “Atheism, Impiety and the Limos Mēlios in Aristophanes' Birds,” American Journal of Philology 115, no. 3 (1994): 352–58Google Scholar; and Strauss, Socrates and Aristophanes, 318n49.

25 Henderson is perhaps unique in seeing Peisetairos as a beneficent master and one whose rule over the birds has been legitimated by their consent (“Mass versus Elite,” 141–42).

26 We saw earlier that Peisetairos had made great progress toward becoming supreme even during his Great Speech, so only birds could be surprised that he is called “ruler” (archōn) at 1123 and ends up on top.

27 Contrast Clouds 1121, where the Clouds do assert their divinity.

28 Strauss adds deliciously that the enemies of democracy are likely to be aristocratic birds, who would surely be plump and juicy (Socrates and Aristophanes, 187).

29 Henderson, “Mass versus Elite,” 141–42; Dunbar, Birds, 720.

30 Henderson, Jeffrey, Aristophanes' “The Birds” (Newburyport, MA: Focus Classical Library, 1999)Google Scholar, 14.

31 Dunbar, by contrast, denies that the references to Peisetairos as a man are “significant for the plot” (Birds, on 1726–30). These references do not settle by themselves the question of the relationship between Peisetairos's interests and those of the birds, but they help to keep this important theme front and center. Surprisingly, the play may suggest it is easier for a man to become a god than to become a bird: the former requires only a change in opinions, while the latter requires a conquest of nature. Romer also finds it significant that Prometheus refers to Peisetairos as a human being (“Atheism, Impiety and the Limos Mēlios in Aristophanes' Birds,” 360). If the birds and Peisetairos must belong to the same species, let us consider them both human: not by a miraculous biological transformation but by the greater power of metaphor, the birds become foolish groups of human beings who, seduced by high but unrealizable hopes, put their lives in jeopardy.

32 These and related events are of course memorably described by Thucydides, especially in 6.1–32, 53–61, 74, 88–93, 7.18.

33 Tereus is never described as a king or tyrant over the birds, and his powers appear to be limited. He does not dine on birds; he is able to call the birds into assembly only with the aid of his wife's alluring voice; only with difficulty does he get the birds to listen to Peisetairos.

34 Sommerstein is a good example, but he is hardly alone: Sommerstein, Alan H., “An Alternative Democracy and an Alternative to Democracy in Aristophanic Comedy,” in Democrazia e antidemocrazia nel mondo greco, ed. Bultrighini, Umberto (Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso, 2005), 197–201Google Scholar. It appears that Sommerstein holds these judgments to have been expressed more for their attractiveness to the audience than because Aristophanes himself was wedded to them, which I think represents an important qualification.

35 Contrast the Ploutos, which includes Penia's challenge to Chremylos (415–609); the Peace, which has assorted merchants and manufacturers of arms protesting Trygaeus's defeat of Zeus (1208–64; cf. 1075, 1077–79); and, especially, the Clouds, in which Strepsiades puts his finger on Socrates's failings (1476–77, 1506–7). In the Birds, the comically disgruntled characters do not so much complain about Peisetairos's actions as wish to enjoy the benefits deriving from his innovations. Iris's apparently empty threat is the lone exception to this rule (1238–61).

36 He is never shown wielding the scepter. The missing scepter, I think, underscores the illegitimacy of his rule: he rules by personal power, not by established law, as represented by the scepter. Dunbar's alternative explanation for the absence of the scepter stresses that the thunderbolt is more dramatic on stage than a mere scepter; she suggests also that the absence of the scepter is less offensive to tradition and leaves the full extent of Peisetairos's revolution in a little doubt (Dunbar, Birds, 13–14).

37 Socrates's effect on others is not in every case immediately disastrous: perhaps he enriches the lives of his students. The disaster ensues from his oblivion or indifference regarding the relations between his thinkery and the larger society.

38 I take Pheidippides's views to reflect those of the teacher he has so come to admire.

39 The father beater is not strictly excluded; he is reformed and redirected as a soldier to the Thracian front. But he is not admitted on the terms promised by the birds, that the restraints of law would be superseded and that father beating in particular would be welcome (755–59).

40 Dunbar, Birds, on lines 990 and 1397; 1018–19; 1030–31; 1050–51; and 1461–65.

41 Little known today, Meton was apparently quite distinguished in his day. Dunbar stresses the similarities between Meton and Socrates, as does Strauss (Dunbar, Birds, 550–51; Strauss, Socrates and Aristophanes, 175).

42 Strauss is unusually clear on the importance of Euelpides for the Birds; I found his contrast between “birdism” and “Titanism,” the respective principles of Euelpides and Peisetairos, to be especially helpful (Socrates and Aristophanes, 181).

43 Polypragmōn at 471 contrasts with apragmona at 44.

44 Although “Peisthetairos” is the reading of the manuscripts, editors object that this word is formed on the passive stem of the verb, as no other surviving names apparently were, and that it suggests “persuaded by his companions,” whereas the play shows Peisetairos to be the arch-persuader (Dunbar, Birds, 128–29). Were I to try to defend the use of the passive, I would speculate that perhaps Peisetairos has been too quickly persuaded to think that the life of ruling is best. Might an unexamined desire to rule escape the sort of scrutiny to which he subjects justice and the gods, which oppose this desire?

45 It is awkward to discuss the life of a god who does not exist, but the picture of Zeus in the Birds is one of a god who does not take an active interest in ruling (726–28). What little he is reported to do he does through delegation, even when his own most vital interests are at stake. The “wages” for ruling may be considerable, but—from a certain perspective—the burdens of office are far greater (cf. Plato, Republic 346e7–347d8).