Close readings of the parody reveal a deep engagement with Homeric language and themes. The poem’s plot features a friendship between a frog (Physignathus, “Puffing-Jaw”) and a mouse (Psikharpaks, “Crumb-thief”) that, following the mouse’s death by falling from the frog’s back during a pond-crossing (86-99), results in heroic combat between their ‘tribes’, culminating in a mouse victory (aided by crabs sent by Zeus). The poem also features heroic genealogies, grandiose speeches, type-scenes, a use of paradeigma (e.g., Europa and Zeus), a divine council and divine intervention. At times, the poem may provide parody of the Iliad specifically (e.g., the frog’s father is named Peleus [19]). Recent scholarship has argued that the parody is engaged in serious—albeit indirect—literary criticism. Inconsistencies in the poem, as when combatants die only to reappear, have been seen by some as intentional imitations of a ‘nodding Homer’ rather than evidence of manuscript corruption.

The poem is very funny at times and attests to deep engagement with different generic traditions, including animal fable, parodic animal epic, the language of tragedy and comedy, as well as traditional epic and myth. Most scholars do believe that there was a performance tradition of poems like the Batrakhomuomakhia, but there is a general consensus that this poem does not come directly from such a context. The poem has attracted new interest over the past few years, including a short student commentary and translation by Joel Christensen and Erik Robinson, a longer scholarly commentary by Matthew Hosty, and a lively new translation by A. E. Stallings.