Third Stasimon
ταχὺ δὴ πολυάνορα τάνδε πόλιν
καλεῖ τις ἀνθρώπων.
1315 τύχη μόνον προσείη.
κατέχουσι δʼ ἔρωτες ἐμᾶς πόλεως.
θάττον φέρειν κελεύω.
τί γὰρ οὐκ ἔνι ταύτῃ
καλὸν ἀνδρὶ μετοικεῖν;
1320 Σοφία Πόθος Ἀμβροσία Χάριτες
τό τε τῆς ἀγανόφρονος Ἡσυχίας
εὐήμερον πρόσωπον.
ὡς βλακικῶς διακονεῖς·
οὐ θᾶττον ἐγκονήσεις;
1325 φερέτω κάλαθον ταχύ τις πτερύγων,
σὺ δʼ αὖθις ἐξόρμα
τύπτων γε τοῦτον ὡδί.
πάνυ γὰρ βραδύς ἐστί τις ὥσπερ ὄνος.
Μανῆς γάρ ἐστι δειλός.
1330 σὺ δὲ τὰ πτερὰ πρῶτον
διάθες τάδε κόσμῳ,
τά τε μουσίχʼ ὁμοῦ τά τε μαντικὰ καὶ
τὰ θαλάττιʼ. ἔπειτα δʼ ὅπως φρονίμως
πρὸς ἄνδρʼ ὁρῶν πτερώσεις.
1330–1349

these wings all out for each cohort—

musical wings and wings of seers, wings for the sea. You must be clear— you need to look at all such things when you give every man his wings.

[Manes comes out with a basket, again moving very slowly.]
PISTHETAIROS [going at Manes and grabbling him]

By the kestrels, I can’t stop grabbing you— when I see how miserably slow you are.

[Manes twists loose and runs back into the house. A young man enters singing.]
YOUNG MAN [singing]

Oh, I wish I could an eagle be soaring high above the barren sea, the grey-blue ocean swell so free.

PISTHETAIROS

It looks like our messenger told us the truth— here comes someone singing that eagle-song.

YOUNG MAN

Damn it—there’s nothing in the world as sweet as flying . . .

<PISTHETAIROS

You’ve come to get some wings from us, I guess.

YOUNG MAN

Yes, I’m in love with all your birdy ways— I want to live with you and fly. Besides, I think your laws are really keen.

PISTHETAIROS

What laws? The birds have many laws.

YOUNG MAN

All of them—but I really like that one which says it’s all right for a younger bird to beat up his old man and strangle him.

PISTHETAIROS

Yes, by god, we think it very manly when a bird, while still a chick, beats up his dad.

Translation by Ian Johnston, Vancouver Island University
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An open-access project
Hall 1906
OCT
Hall & Geldart, OCT, 1906 · 1906
The Editor

Frederick William Hall (1865–1948) was a classical scholar and Fellow of St John's College, Oxford. Together with William Martin Geldart, he produced the Oxford Classical Text of several authors. Hall was a careful editor known for his thorough collation of manuscripts and his conservative approach to textual criticism.

About This Edition

The Hall–Geldart editions in the Oxford Classical Texts series provide reliable critical texts with selective apparatus criticus. The OCT series, established in 1894 as the Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, aims to present the best available Greek and Latin texts in a format suitable for both scholarly use and teaching. Each volume provides a clean text with the most significant manuscript variants recorded at the foot of each page.

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