Recent criticism of Birds has tended either to represent the play as an allegory, positive or negative, of the state of politics in Athens, or, where the play's ambiguities are felt to be too great, to speak of it as a play from which political commentary has been excluded. In attempting to reconcile these competing readings of the play, I will argue that it not only provides a radical deconstruction of the fantastic notion that a ‘place without trouble’ (44) could ever exist, but is also intensely political in its examination of the nature of Athenian democracy in general and of the specific political situation at the time of its composition.

Like Peace, Birds presents a new start. Since it recounts the creation of a new city, it is not surprising to find it structured in the manner of myths of city-foundation, designed to legitimate a city and to celebrate its foundation as something divinely inspired. But the city in Birds is to be unusual, not least because it is founded in despite of the gods, and the play prepares the audience for this abnormality by using the traditional elements of the foundation-myth, but persistently distorting them.