The Battle of the Frogs and Mice

The Battle of the Frogs and Mice is a short, silly poem from ancient Greece. That's right! The ancient Greeks had a sense of humour and liked children's stories.

The Battle of the Frogs and Mice tells the story of a great war, with brave heroes, shining armor, fiery speeches and gods arguing on Mount Olympus, except every one of the heroes is a frog or a mouse.

It's a spoof of Homer's Iliad, and for hundreds of years people believed Homer wrote it himself, as a joke. Today, scholars think a later poet wrote it, poking gentle fun at the most famous war story of all. Its Greek name, Batrachomyomachia, is just "frog-mouse-battle" squished into one very long word.

The story on this page is based on Hugh G. Evelyn-White's 1914 English translation, "Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica" and has been heavily rewritten by Leanne Guenther (me) in 2026 to shorten the story and make it a little easier for kids (and parents) today to enjoy.

Jump to: The Mouse and the Frog King | The Armies Get Ready | The Gods Take Sides | The Battle | Why It's Funny

The Mouse and the Frog King

I begin by calling on the Muses to fill my heart with song, for I will sing of a mighty war: of the clash of shields and the deeds of brave warriors, and how the mice fought the frogs.

One hot day, a young mouse named Crumb-snatcher, who had just escaped from a hungry weasel, stopped at the edge of a pond to drink. Up from the water popped a frog with big puffy cheeks. It was Puff-cheek, king of all the frogs.

"Who are you, stranger?" said the king. "Tell me truly, and I'll take you home as my guest." So Crumb-snatcher told him about his life. He lived in people's houses and feasted on bread, honey cakes, ham, cheese and sesame seeds. He feared nothing in battle, he said, except hawks, weasels and mousetraps.

The frog king laughed. "We frogs have wonders of our own, on land and in the water. Climb on my back, and I'll show you my palace."

So the mouse climbed on and held tight around the frog's neck. At first he loved it, gliding past the green reeds. But then the water began to splash over him, and he cried out in fear, steering with his tail like an oar. Suddenly a water snake rose up out of the pond. King Puff-cheek dove straight to the bottom to hide, forgetting all about his passenger, and poor Crumb-snatcher sank beneath the water.

"You won't get away with this!" he squeaked, as the waves closed over him. Another mouse, watching from the bank, saw everything and ran to tell the others.

The Armies Get Ready

The mice were furious. At sunrise they gathered and declared war, and they armed themselves like true heroes, using whatever they could find:

• The mice made shin guards from split bean pods, shields from the round middles of oil lamps, and helmets from chickpea husks. For spears, they carried long bronze sewing needles.
• The frogs made shin guards from mallow leaves, armor from beet leaves, and shields from big cabbage leaves. Their spears were sharp, pointed rushes, and they wore snail shells for helmets.

A mouse herald named Go-in-the-pot hopped down to the pond to deliver the challenge. The frogs grumbled that this was all their king's fault. Then King Puff-cheek told a big fib. He said he'd never even seen the young mouse Crumb-snatcher, and the silly thing must have drowned trying to swim like a frog. So the frogs believed him and lined up along the shore, ready to fight.

The Gods Take Sides

Up on Mount Olympus, Zeus saw the two armies, as huge as the armies of the giants, and called the gods together. "Who will you help?" he asked, and he teased Athena that she must want to help the mice, since they were always scampering around her temple.

Athena wasn't having it. "I'll never help the mice," she said. "They've chewed up my garlands and drunk the oil from my lamps. Worst of all, they nibbled holes in the beautiful robe I wove myself, and now I owe the weaver money to fix it!"

"But I won't help the frogs either," she went on. "After my last battle, I came home exhausted, and they kept me awake all night with their croaking. I didn't sleep a wink until the rooster crowed." So the gods agreed to stay out of it and watch the battle from the sky.

The Battle

Two gnats blew their trumpets, and Zeus thundered from the sky, and the war began. Frogs and mice with names like Loud-croaker, Lick-platter, Mud-lover and Cheese-nibbler charged at one another, and the battle raged back and forth along the shore.

Then a bold young mouse named Slice-snatcher swore he would wipe out the whole frog nation. Zeus felt sorry for the frogs, so he hurled a thunderbolt, and all of Olympus shook. But the mice didn't even slow down.

So Zeus sent help of a very different kind: an army of crabs. They came marching sideways out of the water, with backs like anvils, crooked claws, eight legs each, and eyes that poked up out of their chests. They pinched the mice by their tails and paws until the whole mouse army turned and ran.

And as the sun went down, the great war of the frogs and mice came to an end, after lasting exactly one day.

Why It Was Funny to the Ancient Greeks

The poem is full of jokes that copy the Iliad. In Homer, heroes put on gleaming bronze armor piece by piece, and here the mice do the same thing with bean pods and needles. Homer's heroes have grand names and give long speeches about their famous fathers, and here they're called things like Cheese-nibbler and Lick-platter. Homer's gods argue about whether to save the Greeks or the Trojans, and here Athena is grumpy about a ruined robe and a bad night's sleep.

If you've read the Iliad, try spotting the scenes the story is making fun of.

Iliad coloring pages More of Homer's works