Myth Monday - Another Mouse God

The old man ... prayed apart to King Apollo whom lovely Leto had borne. "Hear me," he cried, "O god of the silver bow, that protectest Chryse and holy Cilla and rulest Tenedos with thy might, hear me oh thou of Sminthe. If I have ever decked your temple with garlands, or burned your thigh-bones in fat of bulls or goats, grant my prayer, and let your arrows avenge these my tears upon the Danaans."
~ From Iliad Book I (Public Domain Translation)

Last week's Myth Monday featured another god associated with a mouse, Ganesha. The mouse was Ganesha's vehicle (vahana). This week's mouse god is Apollo Smintheus (Sminthius). His mouse connection is less clear.

It is the Sminthean cult of Apollo (as opposed to, for instance, the Delian Apollo) that is associated with mice, but we don't know for sure what Apollo's original mouse-smintheus association was. Smintheus could be a geographic name, from a place in Asia Minor called Sminthia, which Strabo* says is near Hamaxitus, although Homer places the early cult centers of Apollo Smintheus in the cities of Chrysa and Tenedos. The Iliad's Apollo of Sminthos may just be a local Apollo with no reference to rodents; however, "smintheus" could also be from a Greek word for mouse in the Aeolic or Cretan dialect [Farnell]. Depictions of Smithean Apollo show the god standing with a mouse under foot. He is also shown with a mouse in hand.

The main effect on the ancient Greeks of the relationship between Apollo and rodents was that Apollo caused and averted plagues. Frederick Bernheim and Ann Adams Zener say, "The god who controls rodents can cause not only pestilence but starvation and defeat in battle as well." If, as Farnell says, Apollo Smintheus protected farmers from field-mice depredations, he therefore staved off famine, a pestilence. If pestilence isn't close enough to plague for you, famine was often associated with the plague disease typhus, according to G. F. Hill.

Apollo was also associated with plague and pestilence that may have had no association with rodents. Bernheim and Zener review such occasions, including the plague arrows of the Trojan War.

These include the pestilence at Troy when Laomedon refused to pay him for his help in building the walls (Apollodorus 2.5.9); the pestilence along with thunder bolts and earthquakes he brought to the Phlegyans when they attacked Delphi (Pausanias 9.36.3); pestilence to the house of Amphion who mocked him (Pausanias 9.5.9); and to Athens during the Peloponnesian War. In the epidemic at Troy [(II. 1.50)] rodents played no part. The arrows were the direct transmitter of the disease.

The arrows serve as a picturesque, pre-scientific explanation for the spread of plague.

References and Further Readings

• _{"The Sminthian Apollo and the Epidemic among the Achaeans at Troy," by Frederick Bernheim and Ann Adams Zener.
  Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-), Vol. 108 (1978), pp. 11- 14.}
• _{The cults of the Greek states, Volume 4, by Lewis Richard Farnell.}
• _{"The Late Neolithic in the Eastern Aegean: Excavations at Gülpinar in the Troad," by Turan Takaoğlu
  Hesperia, Vol. 75, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 2006), pp. 289-315.}
• _{"Apollo and St. Michael: Some Analogies," by G. F. Hill
  The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 36 (1916), pp. 134-162.}
• _{"ΣΜΙΝΘΕΥΣ, Pestilence and Mice," by James Hope Moulton and A. T. C. Cree
  The Classical Review, Vol. 15, No. 5 (Jun., 1901), pp. 284-285.}
• _{"Apollo Smintheus, Rats, Mice, and Plague," by A. Lang
  The Classical Review, Vol. 15, No. 6 (Jul., 1901), pp. 319-320.}

Here's what Strabo has to say about the location:

The temple of Apollo Smintheus is in this Chrysa, and the symbol, a mouse, which shows the etymology of the epithet Smintheus, lying under the foot of the statue. They are the workmanship of Scopas of Paros. They reconcile the history, and the fable about the mice, in this following manner.

The Teucri, who came from Crete, (of whom Callinus, the elegiac poet, gave the first history, and he was followed by many others,) were directed by an oracle to settle wherever the earth-born inhabitants should attack them, which, it is said, occurred to them near Hamaxitus, for in the night-time great multitudes of field-mice came out and devoured all arms or utensils which were made of leather; the colony therefore settled there. These people also called the mountain Ida, after the name of the mountain in Crete. But Heracleides of Pontus says, that the mice, which swarmed near the temple, were considered as sacred, and the statue is represented as standing upon a mouse.

....

The name of Smintheus is to be found in many places, for near Hamaxitus itself, besides the Sminthian Apollo at the temple, there are two places called Sminthia, and others in the neighbouring district of Larissa. In the district also of Pariane is a place called Sminthia; others in Rhodes, Lindus, and in many places besides. The temple is now called Sminthium.
Strabo XIII (1903 translation)