Ancient readers and hearers, Greek and Latin, considered the poems printed here in translation to be the work of Homer, composer of the Iliad and the Odyssey, so they shared the great authority of the epics. Though we do not know their specific authors, they remain important sources of the mythical tales they recount. The Frog-Mouse-Battle occurs with countless variations in about as many manuscripts as the Odyssey, the most popular of all epics, thereby suggesting its use for instruction in the Byzantine empire, where the MSS of the poem were transcribed. The many variations in these MSS may indicate that some of the writers were teachers adapting the poem to their particular classroom needs. The translator has published dactylic-hexameter translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey at the University of Michigan Press, and privately of the Oresteia of Aeschylus, the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, the Idylls of Theocritus, and Menander's Dyskolos, The Curmudgeon. He is currently working on translations of the works of Virgil, Homer's greatest follower in the Roman world.
