Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/169

147 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 147 sublime images suggested to the memory, and the comic ones introduced in their stead, renders parody peculiarly fitted to place any subject in a ludicrous, grotesque, and trivial light. The purpose of it, however, was not in o-eneral to detract from the reverence due to the ancient poet (who, in most cases was Homer), by this travestie, but only to add fresh zest and pungency to satire. Perhaps, too, some persons sporting with the austere and stately forms of the epos, (like playful children dressing themselves in gorgeous and flowing robes of state,) might have fallen upon the device of parody. We have already alluded to a fragment of Asius* in elegiac measure, which is not indeed a genuine parody, but which approaches to it. It is a comic description of a beggarly parasite, rendered more ludicrous by a tone of epic solemnity. But, according to the learned Polemon t, the real author of parody was the iambographer Hipponax, of whose pro- ductions in this kind a hexametrical fragment is still extant. § 18. The Batrachomyomachia, or Battle of the Frogs and the Mice (which has come down to us among the lesser Homeric poems), is totally devoid of sarcastic tendency. All attempts to discover a satirical meaning in this little comic epos have been abortive. It is nothing more than the story of a war between the frogs and the mice, which, from the high-sounding names of the combatants, the detailed genealo- gies of the principal persons, the declamatory speeches, the interference of the "-ods of Olympus, and all the pomp and circumstance of the epos, has completely the external character of an epic heroic poem ; a cha- racter ludicrously in contrast with the subject. Notwithstanding many ingenious conceits, it is not, on the whole, remarkable for vigour of poetical conception, and the introduction falls far short of the genuine tone of the Homeric epos, so that everything tends to show that the Batrachomyomachia is a production of the close of this era. This sup- position is confirmed by the tradition that Pigres, the brother of the Halicamassian tyrant Artemisia, and consequently a contemporary of the Persian war, was the author of this poem {, although at a later period of antiquity, in the time of the Romans, the Batrachomyomachia was ascrihed without hesitation to Homer himself. + The passage of Plutarch de Malign. Herod, c. 43. ought to be written as fol- lows: TlXo; li KO.6nfjt.Uov; IV XWa.nru.iu.~iS ayvorjirui fti%pi riXovs tov uyuiu. tov;' EXXjjvoj, u gtuir" l)iayc.jnfftt,<r$a.t o-1/vhjU.ivav.nu. Xuloitn rob; ci-XXovs. Concerning Pigies Bee Said as, who, however, confounds the later with the earlier Artemisia. 1.2
 * Ch. x. § 7. f Ap. Athen. xv. p. 698, B.