Finding the Muse in Mouse: Translating the Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice

Lecture with readings and discussions from Lucretius’s “De Rerum Natura,” Hesiod’s “Works and Days,” Virgil’s “Georgics,” and the pseudo-Homeric “Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice.”

A.E. (Alicia) Stallings, the current Oxford Professor of Poetry, will discuss her experience translating this charming pseudo-Homeric epic, a popular Byzantine school text and the first Greek book printed in the West, that taught generations of scholars their Homeric Greek. The use of parody as paedogical paradigm should be familiar with readers today. Despite its focus on animal actors, the work also has something to teach us about war and humanity.