Aye, aye, my friend, 'tis indeed the road of "oh dears" we are
following.

EUELPIDES
That Philocrates, the bird-seller, played us a scurvy trick,
when he pretended these two guides could help us to find Tereus,[1]
the Epops, who is a bird, without being born of one. He has
indeed sold us this jay, a true son of Tharelides,[2] for
an obolus, and this crow for three, but what can they do? Why,
nothing whatever but bite and scratch! --What's the matter with you
then, that you keep opening your beak? Do you want us to fling
ourselves headlong down these rocks? There is no road that way.

f[1] A king of Thrace, a son of Ares, who married Procne, the daughter
of Pandion, King of Athens, whom he had assisted against the Megarians.
He violated his sister-in-law, Philomela, and then cut out her
tongue; she nevertheless managed to convey to her sister how she had
been treated. They both agreed to kill Itys, whom Procne had borne
to Tereus, and dished up the limbs of his own son to the father;
at the end of the meal Philomela appeared and threw the child's head
upon the table. Tereus rushed with drawn sword upon the princesses,
but all the actors in this terrible scene were metamorph[o]sed. Tereus
became an Epops (hoopoe), Procne a swallow, Philomela a nightingale,
and Itys a goldfinch. According to Anacreon and Apollodorus it was
Procne who became the nightingale and Philomela the swallow, and this
is the version of the tradition followed by Aristophanes.
f[2] An Athenian who had some resemblance to a jay--so says
the scholiast, at any rate.

PISTHETAERUS