But the skipper, who thought it was time to this terrible fight dare finem,
With a scalping-knife jumps on the neck of the snake, secat et dextrâ crinem;
And hurling the scalp in the air, half wild with delight to possess it,
Shouts, “Darn it! We’ve fixed up his flint, for in ventos vita recessit.”
——:o:——
The Oldest Classical Burlesque.
Batrachomyomachia is the cheerful title of the oldest burlesque extant, and even if we do not accept the tradition which assigns its composition to Homer, we may safely consider it to be the earliest of the many travesties of the heroic style of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey.”
According to Plutarch, the real author was one Pigres, of Halicarnassus, who flourished during the Persian war. Statius conjectures that Homer wrote it when a youth, as a trial of his poetical powers; whilst the author of one of finest English translations of Homer, George Chapman, asserts that the work was composed in his old age; when, disgusted with the neglect and ingratitude of his contemporaries, he set to work to show that he could elevate and dignify the wars and struggles of insignificant animals, as he had previously described the heroic actions of the Greeks and Trojans.
Samuel Wesley published an English translation of the Batrachomyomachia, which he called “The Iliad in a Nutshell.” He speaks of it “as perhaps the best, as well as the oldest burlesque in the world.”
The following is a synopsis of the plot of this poem, generally known as the Battle of the Frogs and Mice.