We have now shown traces, at least, of various ways in which an early tribal religion of the mouse—­the mouse pacarissa, as the Peruvians said—­may have been perpetuated.  When we consider that the superseding of the mouse by Apollo must have occurred, if it did occur, long before Homer, we may rather wonder that the mouse left his mark on Greek religion so long.  We have seen mice revered, a god with a mouse-name, the mouse-name recurring in many places, the huaca, or idol, of the mouse preserved in the temples of the god, and the mouse-badge used in several widely severed localities.  It remains (4) to examine the myths about mice.  These, in our opinion, were probably told to account for the presence of the huaca of the mouse in temples, and for the occurrence of the animal in religion, and his connection with Apollo.

A singular mouse-myth, narrated by Herodotus, is worth examining for reasons which will appear later, though the events are said to have happened on Egyptian soil. {111c} According to Herodotus, one Sethos, a priest of Hephaestus (Ptah), was king of Egypt.  He had disgraced the military class, and he found himself without an army when Sennacherib invaded his country.  Sethos fell asleep in the temple, and the god, appearing to him in a vision, told him that divine succour would come to the Egyptians. {112a} In the night before the battle, field-mice gnawed the quivers and shield-handles of the foe, who fled on finding themselves thus disarmed.  ‘And now,’ says Herodotus, ’there standeth a stone image of this king in the temple of Hephaestus, and in the hand of the image a mouse, and there is this inscription, “Let whoso looketh on me be pious."’

Prof.  Sayce {112b} holds that there was no such person as Sethos, but that the legend ’is evidently Egyptian, not Greek, and the name of Sennacherib, as well as the fact of the Assyrian attack, is correct.’  The legend also, though Egyptian, is ’an echo of the biblical account of the destruction of the Assyrian army,’ an account which omits the mice.  ’As to the mice, here,’ says Prof.  Sayce, ’we have to do again with the Greek dragomen (sic).  The story of Sethos was attached to the statue of some deity which was supposed to hold a mouse in its hand.’  It must have been easy to verify this supposition; but Mr. Sayce adds, ’mice were not sacred in Egypt, nor were they used as symbols, or found on the monuments.’  To this remark we may suggest some exceptions.  Apparently this one mouse was found on the monuments.  Wilkinson (iii. 264) says mice do occur in the sculptures, but they were not sacred.  Rats, however, were certainly sacred, and as little distinction is taken, in myth, between rats and mice as between rabbits and hares.  The rat was sacred to Ra, the Sun-god, and (like all totems) was not to be eaten. {113a} This association of the rat and the Sun cannot but remind us of Apollo and his mouse.  According to Strabo, a certain city of Egypt did worship the shrew-mouse.  The Athribitae, or dwellers in Crocodilopolis, are the people to whom he attributes this cult, which he mentions (xvii. 813) among the other local animal-worships of Egypt. {113b} Several porcelain examples of the field-mouse sacred to Horus (commonly called Apollo by the Greeks) may be seen in the British Museum.