SCENE
A wild desolate country with a bare open prospect on one side, and some upright rocks covered with shrubs and brushwood in the centre of the stage. Peisthetairus and Euelpides appear as a couple of worn-out pedestrian travellers, the one with a Raven and the other with a Jackdaw on his hand. They appear to be seeking for a direction from the motions and signals made to them by the Birds.
Eu. (speaking to his Jackdaw).
Right on, do ye say? to the tree there in the distance?
Peis. (speaking first to his Raven, and then to his companion).
Plague take ye! Why this creature calls us back!
Eu. What use can it answer tramping up and down?
We're lost, I tell ye: our journey's come to nothing.
Peis. To think of me travelling a thousand stadia5
With a Raven for my adviser!
Eu. Think of me, too,
Going at the instigation of a Jackdaw,
To wear my toes and my toe nails to pieces!
Peis. I don't know even the country where we've got to.
Eu. And yet you expect to find a country here,
A country for yourself!
Peis. Truly not Ι;10
Not even Execestides[1] could do it,
That finds himself a native everywhere.
Eu. Oh dear! We're come to ruin, utter ruin!
Peis. Then go that way, can't ye: "the Road to Ruin!"
Eu. He has brought us to a fine pass, that crazy fellow,
Philocrates the poulterer; he pretended
To enable us to find where Tereus lives;15
The King that was, the Hoopoe that is now;
Persuading us to buy these creatures of him,
- ↑ Execestides is attacked again in this play, as a foreign barbarian arrogating to himself the privileges of a true-born Athenian.
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