Νεφελοκοκκυγία

Cloudcuckooland, Cloudcuckooville

Translated by David Whitehead3 Oct 2001Vetting: high3 revisions

1 note · 18 words

An invented city in Aristophanes, up in the air.
He jokes that it had been founded by birds.¹

Greek original · Adler’s text

Νεφελοκοκκυγία· πόλις παρὰ Ἀριστοφάνει πεπλασμένη εἰς τὸν ἀέρα οὖσα. ἣν παίζει ἐκεῖνος ὑπὸ ὀρνίθων πεπολίσθαι.

Betacode

*nefelokokkugi/a: po/lis para\ *)aristofa/nei peplasme/nh ei)s to\n a)e/ra ou)=sa. h(\n pai/zei e)kei=nos u(po\ o)rni/qwn pepoli/sqai.

The rendering "Cloudcuckooland", for the fantastical community created by Aristophanes in Birds, is doubtless too entrenched in English usage for it ever to be dislodged; note nevertheless the point, explicit here (via the scholia to line 821), that the place is actually a city-state (polis), with all that that implies.
1A marginal addition in ms M. ↩

Revision history3 revisions · last 7 Jun 2013