Batrachomyomachia. Combat between frogs and rats; title of a burlesque poem commonly attributed to Homer.

This word is formed of three Greek words: βάτραχος, frog; μῦς, rat or mouse ; and μάχη, combat .

The subject of the war between these animals is the death of Psicarpax, a young rat, son of Toxaster, who, having mounted the back of Physignate, a frog, to go visit his palace where he had invited him, was frozen with fear in the middle of a pond, staggered, let go of his driver and perished. The rats suspect Physignate of perfidy, ask for satisfaction, declare war and wage a battle against the frogs, that they would have exterminated if Jupiter and the other gods, in whose presence they were fighting, had not sent help to the frogs in the form of crawfish to stop the rats' fury.

Suidas attributes this poem to Pigres or Tigres of Halicarnassus, brother of the illustrious Artemisia, and the name of this Carien can be read at the head of an ancient manuscript of the King's Library. Etienne Nunnésius and other modern scholars also think that Homer is not at all the author. However, antiquity testifies in favor of the poet; Martial expressly says so in this epigram.

Statius is of the same opinion, and what seems to confirm the opinions of the Ancients on this subject is that in the last century a bas-relief of Archelaus, Sculptor of Priene, was unearthed near Rome, in the gardens of the Emperor Claudius, which represented Homer with two rats, signifying that he was the author of the battle of the rats.

In any case, Mr. Boivin, of the Académie Française and the Académie des Belles-Lettres, translated this little poem into French verse, and his translation is as exact as it is elegant: except that for the easiness of the rhyme, he sometimes gave names to the rats and frogs that were different from those in the Greek text.