The Batrakhomuomakhia

https://sententiaeantiquae.com/original-projects-and-translations/2482-2/

The Batrakhomuomakhia (“The Battle of Frogs and Mice”, also Batrakhomakhia) is an example of epic parody dated to the 6th through 4th centuries BCE or later (the Suda also lists “Battle of the Cranes”, Geranomakhia; and “Battle of the Spiders”, Arakhnomakhia; fragments remain of a “Weasel and Mouse War”). The poem’s style and language indicate later composition or editing. Ancient authors confirm this range of time: Plutarch (Agesilaus 15.4) has Alexander the Great referring to a Batrakhomakhia; the parody’s language echoes Anacreon (line 78 = fr. 460 PMG; see Bliquez 1977, 12).

The poem’s authorship is uncertain: Hellenistic sources attribute it to Homer; later sources credit Pigres of Halicarnassus (Plutarch, De Heroditi Malignitate 873). References to Athena, possible allusions to her rituals, and suggestive toponyms have suggested Athenian origins. Ancient testimonies report competitions for parody in the Greater Panathenaea during the 4th century BCE, but Aristotle places the parodic work of the Margites and Hipponax in the previous century (Poetics 1448b38-9a2).

The poem has many tropes from epic narrative. The basic plot features a friendship between a frog (Physignathus, “Puffing-Jaw”) and a mouse (Psikharpaks, “Crumb-thief”) that, once the mouse dies in a pond-crossing after falling from the frog’s back (86-99), results in heroic combat between their ‘tribes’, culminating in a mouse victory (aided by crabs sent by Zeus). In addition, the poem offers: heroic genealogies, speeches, type-scenes (heralds, arming sequences, assemblies), a use of paradeigma (e.g. Europa and Zeus), a divine council and divine intervention. This parodied world is somewhat post-Heroic: Athena refuses to aid mouse or frog and exhorts the Olympian gods to watch upon the conflict. There are some inconsistencies in the poem as combatants die only to reappear, which have been seen as textual errors or intentional imitations of a ‘nodding Homer’ (Kelly 2009). This latter reading is more in accord with a scholarly sense that sees parody engaged in serious—albeit indirect—literary criticism.