The Birds by Aristophanes

A bit dated lol, written in 414 bc. I saw this book announced on the standard ebooks new releases feed and it piqued my interest. I think it’s the first play I’ve read since shakespeare in school, and certainly my first classical greek play. I found it interesting! Also easy to read apart from the 205 footnotes that were distracting, those in turn were helpful/fun/inscrutable. I particularly enjoyed: The owl was dedicated to Athene, and being respected at Athens, it had greatly multiplied. Hence the proverb, “taking owls to Athens” similar to our English “taking coals to Newcastle.” There are a lot of owls here in athens, I hear a skops owl hooting most nights. I shall adopt this idiom. I suppose aristophanes had no idea just how unsuitable a material clouds are for building his “cloud cuckoo land” city upon. The comedy is about two disgruntled athenians leave to set up a kingdom in the sky by calling upon the king of the birds, Epops (an hoopoe), and thus blocking the sacrifices to…