ABSTRACT
At the City Dionysia in the year 414 B.C., Aristophanes exhibited the Birds, one of the most exuberant products of his fantasy. Men not only yield to the birds, they ape their ways and flock to the new city in order to borrow wings and enjoy its special blessings. In a brilliant essay, William Arrowsmith revived the theory that the city of the birds is a warning to the Athenians: it is “Aristophanes’ image of what all human physis would be if it truly dared to assert itself against the nomos of society and religion”. But the city of the birds has also a restless, expansionist drive that is at odds with the image of a settled, well-governed polity associated with a well-ordered state. There is an air of unconstrained goodness among the birds that is capable of reconciling virtue and desire, and of uniting, in the antique legislation of the storks, social order and the state of nature.
