To Homer were popularly ascribed certain burlesque poems in which
Aristotle (_Poetics_ iv) saw the germ of comedy. Most interesting of
these, were it extant, would be the _Margites_. The hero of the epic is
at once sciolist and simpleton, “knowing many things, but knowing them
all badly”. It is unfortunately impossible to trace the plan of the
poem, which presumably detailed the adventures of this unheroic
character: the metre used was a curious mixture of hexametric and
iambic lines. The date of such a work cannot be high: Croiset thinks it
may belong to the period of Archilochus (c. 650 B.C.), but it may well
be somewhat later.
Another poem, of which we know even less, is the _Cercopes_. These
Cercopes (‘Monkey-Men’) were a pair of malignant dwarfs who went about
the world mischief-making. Their punishment by Heracles is represented
on one of the earlier metopes from Selinus. It would be idle to
speculate as to the date of this work.
Finally there is the _Battle of the Frogs and Mice_. Here is told the
story of the quarrel which arose between the two tribes, and how they
fought, until Zeus sent crabs to break up the battle. It is a parody of
the warlike epic, but has little in it that is really comic or of
literary merit, except perhaps the list of quaint arms assumed by the
warriors. The text of the poem is in a chaotic condition, and there are
many interpolations, some of Byzantine date.
Though popularly ascribed to Homer, its real author is said by Suidas
to have been Pigres, a Carian, brother of Artemisia, ‘wife of
Mausolus’, who distinguished herself at the battle of Salamis.
Suidas is confusing the two Artemisias, but he may be right in
attributing the poem to about 480 B.C.