Peisetaerus

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The Athenian hero of Aristophanes' comic play The Birds, who persuades the birds to build a city in the sky
2. A character in Aristophanes' comedy The Birds, an Athenian man who founds Cloudcuckooland with the help of the birds
3. Title figure of an ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes, a clever Athenian who convinces the birds to rule over the heavens

Etymology: Peisetaerus is the name Aristophanes gave the scheming Athenian who persuades the birds to build a city in the sky, Nephelokokkygia, "Cloudcuckooland," in his comedy "Birds," staged in 414 BC. The name is a compound of Greek "peithein," "to persuade," and "aietos," "eagle," so it means roughly "Persuade-the-Eagle" or "Eagle-Persuader." The joke is built into the name: he talks his way into power over the birds, and the eagle, the king of birds, is the one he must win over. The name also carries a sly hint at the character's ambitions. Athenian audiences would have recognised "peithein" as the root of "peitho," the goddess of persuasion, whose gift of words was central to Athenian public life in the assembly and law courts. Peisetaerus is a master of exactly that skill, using rhetoric to turn a bird-run world into his own kingdom. Because the name is a transparent Greek compound, it has no real English history of its own. It survives in English almost only as a literary name, used by readers and scholars who discuss the play.