Jonathan Swift's satire describes a battle fought between ancient and modern books in the King's Library in Saint James' Palace. This account is Swift's contribution to a controversy that had been going on in France and England for several decades between those who thought Greek and Roman texts remained the most important in the world and those who believed that modern learning had surpassed them. Swift's patron, Sir William Temple, was one of the former party and published his argument, Of Ancient and Modern Learning, in 1690.

Swift writes that the quarrel between ancient and modern texts first began

about a small spot of ground, lying and being upon one of the two tops of the hill Parnassus; the highest and largest of which had, it seems, been time out of mind in quiet possession of certain tenants, called the Ancients; and the other was held by the Moderns.

The Moderns sent ambassadors to the Ancients, asking them to give up their higher position or allow the Moderns to level it "with shovels and mattocks" until the two parts of the mountain are equal. The Ancients refused, saying that if the Moderns want equality, they should raise their own part of the mountain, not flatten the other part.

Before he begins his account of the battle in the King's Library, Swift asserts that books preserve the spirits of their writers. Hence, the books fight in the same way and for the same values as those who wrote them, forming alliances and attacking enemies accordingly. 

In recent years "a new species of controversial books" with "a more malignant spirit" have disturbed "the public peace of libraries." In the Saint James' Palace library, the librarian favors the Moderns, often putting them on the best shelves while the Ancients are "buried alive in some obscure corner." At other times, he mixes up the Ancient and Modern books, increasing the discontent on both sides.

A giant spider lives in the highest corner of one of the library windows, where he has constructed an intricate web, which Swift describes as a fortress. When a bee flies into the web, destroying part of it, the spider is angry and scolds the bee as "a vagabond without house or home," which lives by stealing indiscriminately from the flowers and plants. The bee replies that the spider spins his web out of the "plentiful store of dirt and poison" in his breast. In contrast, the bee makes itself useful by producing honey and wax.

A volume of Aesop's Fables listens to the dispute between the spider and the bee. He says the spider represents the Moderns and has created nothing but a filthy cobweb. The Ancients, however, are like the bee in that "instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light." 

Aesop's speech moves both the Ancient and the Modern books to join the battle. They gather their armies, with Tasso, Milton, Dryden, and Wither disputing which should command the Modern cavalry, other brigades led by Descartes, Hobbes, Paracelsus, and Harvey, and the rest "a confused multitude." The army of the Ancients is much smaller, led by Homer, Pindar, Euclid, Plato, Aristotle, and others. This army includes Modern writers who support the Ancients in the dispute, notably Sir William Temple.

The gods learn of the battle between the books, and Jupiter calls a council in heaven. Athena speaks for the Ancients, while Momus represents the Moderns. While Athena is known as the goddess of...