The Birds Part 14

PISTHETAERUS All arm themselves with slings and bows! This way, all our soldiers; shoot and strike! Some one give me a sling!

CHORUS War, a terrible war is breaking out between us and the G.o.ds!

Come, let each one guard Air, the son of Erebus,(1) in which the clouds float. Take care no immortal enters it without your knowledge. Scan all sides with your glance. Hark! methinks I can hear the rustle of the swift wings of a G.o.d from heaven.

f(1) Chaos, Night, Tartarus, and Erebus alone existed in the beginning; Eros was born from Night and Erebus, and he wedded Chaos and begot Earth, Air, and Heaven; so runs the fable.

PISTHETAERUS Hi! you woman! where are you flying to? Halt, don't stir!

keep motionless! not a beat of your wing!--Who are you and from what country? You must say whence you come.(1)

f(1) Iris appears from the top of the stage and arrests her flight in mid-career.

IRIS I come from the abode of the Olympian G.o.ds.

PISTHETAERUS What's your name, ship or cap?(1)

f(1) Ship, because of her wings, which resemble oars; cap, because she no doubt wore the head-dress (as a messenger of the G.o.ds) with which Hermes is generally depicted.

IRIS I am swift Iris.

PISTHETAERUS Paralus or Salaminia?(1)

f(1) The names of the two sacred galleys which carried Athenian officials on State business.

IRIS What do you mean?

PISTHETAERUS Let a buzzard rush at her and seize her.(1)

f(1) A buzzard is named in order to raise a laugh, the Greek name also meaning, etymologically, provided with three t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, vigorous in love.

IRIS Seize me! But what do all these insults mean?

PISTHETAERUS Woe to you!

IRIS 'Tis incomprehensible.

PISTHETAERUS By which gate did you pa.s.s through the wall, wretched woman?

IRIS By which gate? Why, great G.o.ds, I don't know.

PISTHETAERUS You hear how she holds us in derision. Did you present yourself to the officers in command of the jays? You don't answer. Have you a permit, bearing the seal of the storks?

IRIS Am I awake?

PISTHETAERUS Did you get one?

IRIS Are you mad?

PISTHETAERUS No head-bird gave you a safe-conduct?

IRIS A safe-conduct to me, you poor fool!

PISTHETAERUS Ah! and so you slipped into this city on the sly and into these realms of air-land that don't belong to you.

IRIS And what other roads can the G.o.ds travel?

PISTHETAERUS By Zeus! I know nothing about that, not I. But they won't pa.s.s this way. And you still dare to complain! Why, if you were treated according to your deserts, no Iris would ever have more justly suffered death.

IRIS I am immortal.

PISTHETAERUS You would have died nevertheless.--Oh! 'twould be truly intolerable! What! should the universe obey us and the G.o.ds alone continue their insolence and not understand that they must submit to the law of the strongest in their due turn? But tell me, where are you flying to?

IRIS I? The messenger of Zeus to mankind, I am going to tell them to sacrifice sheep and oxen on the altars and to fill their streets with the rich smoke of burning fat.

PISTHETAERUS Of which G.o.ds are you speaking?

IRIS Of which? Why, of ourselves, the G.o.ds of heaven.

PISTHETAERUS You, G.o.ds?

IRIS Are there others then?

PISTHETAERUS Men now adore the birds as G.o.ds, and 'tis to them, by Zeus, that they must offer sacrifices, and not to Zeus at all!

IRIS Oh! fool! fool! Rouse not the wrath of the G.o.ds, for 'tis terrible indeed. Armed with the brand of Zeus, Justice would annihilate your race; the lightning would strike you as it did Licymnius and consume both your body and the porticos of your palace.(1)

f(1) Iris' reply is a parody of the tragic style.--'Lycimnius' is, according to the scholiast, the t.i.tle of a tragedy by Euripides, which is about a ship that is struck by lightning.

PISTHETAERUS Here! that's enough tall talk. Just you listen and keep quiet! Do you take me for a Lydian or a Phrygian(1) and think to frighten me with your big words? Know, that if Zeus worries me again, I shall go at the head of my eagles, who are armed with lightning, and reduce his dwelling and that of Amphion to cinders.(2) I shall send more than six hundred porphyrions clothed in leopards' skins(3) up to heaven against him; and formerly a single Porphyrion gave him enough to do.

As for you, his messenger, if you annoy me, I shall begin by stretching your legs asunder, and so conduct myself, Iris though you be, that despite my age, you will be astonished. I will show you something that will make you three times over.

f(1) i.e. for a poltroon, like the slaves, most of whom came to Athens from these countries.

f(2) A parody of a pa.s.sage in the lost tragedy of 'Niobe' of Aeschylus.

f(3) Because this bird has a spotted plumage.--Porphyrion is also the name of one of the t.i.tans who tried to storm heave.

IRIS May you perish, you wretch, you and your infamous words!

PISTHETAERUS Won't you be off quickly? Come, stretch your wings or look out for squalls!

IRIS If my father does not punish you for your insults...