EUELPIDES And that I to this jay, which has torn every nail from my
fingers!

PISTHETAERUS If only I knew where we were....

EUELPIDES Could you find your country again from here?

PISTHETAERUS No, I feel quite sure I could not, any more than could
Execestides(1) find his.

f(1) A stranger who wanted to pass as an Athenian, although coming
originally for a far-away barbarian country.

EUELPIDES Oh dear! oh dear!

PISTHETAERUS Aye, aye, my friend, 'tis indeed the road of "oh dears" we
are following.

EUELPIDES That Philocrates, the bird-seller, played us a scurvy trick,
when he pretended these two guides could help us to find Tereus,(1) the
Epops, who is a bird, without being born of one. He has indeed sold us
this jay, a true son of Tharelides,(2) for an obolus, and this crow
for three, but what can they do? Why, nothing whatever but bite and
scratch!--What's the matter with you then, that you keep opening your
beak? Do you want us to fling ourselves headlong down these rocks? There
is no road that way.

f(1) A king of Thrace, a son of Ares, who married Procne, the daughter
of Pandion, King of Athens, whom he had assisted against the Megarians.
He violated his sister-in-law, Philomela, and then cut out her tongue;
she nevertheless managed to convey to her sister how she had been
treated. They both agreed to kill Itys, whom Procne had borne to Tereus,
and dished up the limbs of his own son to the father; at the end of
the meal Philomela appeared and threw the child's head upon the table.
Tereus rushed with drawn sword upon the princesses, but all the actors
in this terrible scene were metamorph(o)sed. Tereus became an Epops
(hoopoe), Procne a swallow, Philomela a nightingale, and Itys a
goldfinch. According to Anacreon and Apollodorus it was Procne who
became the nightingale and Philomela the swallow, and this is the
version of the tradition followed by Aristophanes.

f(2) An Athenian who had some resemblance to a jay--so says the
scholiast, at any rate.

PISTHETAERUS Not even the vestige of a track in any direction.

EUELPIDES And what does the crow say about the road to follow?

PISTHETAERUS By Zeus, it no longer croaks the same thing it did.

EUELPIDES And which way does it tell us to go now?

PISTHETAERUS It says that, by dint of gnawing, it will devour my
fingers.

EUELPIDES What misfortune is ours! we strain every nerve to get to the
birds,(1) do everything we can to that end, and we cannot find