Aristotle’s Tereus: Birds, Humans, and Theater in the History of Animals

In Book 8 of the History of Animals, Aristotle concludes his discussion of birds’ seasonal metamorphoses by quoting ten lines about the hoopoe from a tragedy. I show how this fragment—the longest poetic quotation in Aristotle’s extant biological works—is intricately related to his account of how birds change in form, color, and voice. I then propose that, through these verses, Aristotle activates a long poetic tradition of using birds, especially Tereus the hoopoe and Procne the nightingale, to explore questions of human ontology. This tradition is evident in Greek drama, where we can trace a conceptual line between Aristotle’s approach and not just Sophocles’ Tereus but also Aristophanes’ Birds and Euripides’ Helen. Finally, I explore the possibility that, in their focus on human as much as avian transformation, the verses about the hoopoe capture an essential part of Aristotle’s broader project in the History of Animals.