The Birds is the longest surviving comedy by Aristophanes, one of the richest in imaginative inspirations and stylistic virtues, and also one of the most spectacular. Peisetaerus, who embodies in the most characteristic way the dynamism, inventiveness, and ambition of the Athenians, persuades the birds to build a great fortified city in the sky, between the gods and humans. The gods, having no way to communicate with the earth, are forced to capitulate, and Peisetaerus demands and receives, as the price of peace, the sovereign power of Zeus. He marries Basileia, the divine housekeeper who guards the thunderbolts, and thus becomes the ruler of the universe. The interpretative edition (ancient text, translation, interpretative comments) of The Birds by Phanis Kakridis, first published in 1974, has become a classic work and is among the top philological editions of the comedy internationally. In the 45 years that followed, Ph. Kakridis, synthesizing the entirety of modern philological research, enriched his interpretative material and incorporated it into the revised edition of the University of Crete Press, alongside points of commentary and translation, while also adding two significant chapters, the Epilogue and the Parallels, which in one way or another illuminate or complement the interpretation of the comedy. The translation proposal of Ph. Kakridis, in particular, which combines the robust language of modern Greek with respect for the original, serves as a model of translational approach to the ancient text. ............................................... "[...] At the turn from 415 to 414, when Aristophanes completes The Birds, one of the two generals of the Sicilian expedition, Alcibiades, accused of mocking the Eleusinian mysteries, has defected to Sparta, the operations in Sicily drag on, and their outcome, after the intervention of the Lacedaemonians, is uncertain, the trials of the Hermocopids are pending, for the most part, the army and fleet are fighting far away, increasingly the oligarchs find opportunities to intensify their propaganda. Truly, Athenian affairs stood on the razor's edge, and destruction would not be long. In this troubled, extremely fluid, and ominous situation, what virtues could the comic Chorus advise and teach the city, and what could the poet project to make people better in the cities? We do not doubt that Aristophanes would find much to 'teach' if he decided to speak during those difficult times; and then we would admire his discernment, frankness, and poetic inventiveness. However, as things stand now, we find that in this particular case, consciously or not, the Comic was led to something different. Setting aside the immediate topicality, he wanted, in the difficult hour, to lead the Athenians into a fantastic escape, to amuse their worries, to escape from the city, to wander in the countryside, to build a utopia with the birds, to experience like in a dream a fairy tale that resembles and does not resemble reality. Lies and truths are fairy tales, says the popular saying, which is right to accept as a good description if not also as an apt interpretation of The Birds." [From the Epilogue of the edition]