MICE IN ANCIENT TIMES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 83, 8 April 1933, Page 9 (Supplement)

MICE IN ANCIENT TIMES.

STJPEKSTITIOTJS REVERENCE. THREE MYTHICAL INCIDENTS.

Mice seem to have been regarded with some sort of superstition's reverence by "the ancient people of the earth. .In the Egyptian hierography, the figure of a mouse was understood to typify some unexpected and complete destruction rf divine interposition. Apollo in Crete and Troad, had the name of Smintheus, -as being the patronising deity of these animals, to whom he was supposed to have communicated some of his own talent of divination, so that they are enabled to

foresee the destruction of the tenement in wHch they may happen to.be and to make their escape in good time ere the tenement tumbles —a faculty which we have transferred, less classically, to rats. Mice have obtained celebrity by being prominent agents in three transactions. Ashdod, in consequence of the captivity of the ark, was smitted with multitudes of mice; as a trespass-offering to remove' which, five golden mice were presented to the judges of Israel-by the lords of Philistia. Sennacherib's army, when on the point of invading Egypt, was, according to Herodotus, assailed by a countless army of these animals, who, by devouring their bowstriugs, shieldstraps, baggage, etc."foiled the invader, and incapacitated him for completing his object. On another later occasion, when a colony of the Teneri issued from Crete in quest. of settlements in

Asia Minor, they were encouraged and authorised, by" an oracular response, to make their abode in that place, where the earth-born or Indigenes, should emerge from their dens, and make an assault upon them. This happened to them near Amaxitus, a town of the Troad, where, as they lay encamped during the night-time, a countless host of field-mice emerged, swarming from underground, and began to nibble away the leathern part of their armour, their baggage, and eatables. Considering these indigenous creatures as the fulfilment of the! oracle, they settled there; and erected a temple dn Chrysa' to Apollo Smintheus, or Apollo of the Mouse, with a statue of the god, appropiately having a figure of a mouse under his foot. Some geographers have thought that the country called Mysia had its name from this circumstance of the mouse.