| Summary: | This essay is an examination of the early translation history of Batrachomyomachia, a miniature epic poem of just 300 lines often transmitted with the Homeric corpus, into English. The earliest five translations are those of William Fowldes (1603), George Chapman (1624), Samuel Parker (1700), Thomas Parnell (1717) and Samuel Wesley (1726). My study of the reception of this poem in its earliest English translations reveals that it is recruited into a range of moral, political and literary causes. I first examine the tactics adopted by the earliest translators to deal with the special challenges posed by the poem and then I show that the battlefield within the poem translates into a battlefield about translation that is conducted in and through the translations of the poem. In particular, I show how Batrachomyomachia is harnessed to defend and enhance the status of Dryden and Pope as translators of the major Greco-Roman epics.
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