White Mice and Apollo

[sgeorge1701]

First hit:

www.mousiekin.com/mouse_facts_and_trivia.html

Quote:

In Ancient Greece, the God Apollo was sometimes called Apollo Smintheus, which means Apollo the Mouse. To honor him, white mice were kept in Apollo's temples under the altar.

More to come!

Steve

[sgeorge1701]

More scholarly:

www.novaroma.org/forum/mainlist/1998/1998-08-30.html

Quotes:

Researchers [Ferris, Sage & Wilson]from the University of California
published an article suggesting that several strains of the modern white
mouse are descended from Sacred White Mice that lived in the Temple of
Apollo on Tenedos Island, 1500 B.C.E.! White animals were sacred to
Apollo (the white crow was said to have been turned black for having
betrayed him) but the mouse cult of Tenedos honored white mice because
during an invasion (by the infamous Sea Peoples who may have been the
same as the Philistines), the island's mice ate through all the enemy's
bowstrings.

The details of ancient Grecian mouse worship are pretty thin, but they
were definitely bred by generations of priests who used them in
prophesies, & it is easy to imagine them as gifts to rich patrons &
foreign dignitaries, making the white mouse one of the oldest unbroken
pet strains anywhere the world, with a common Aegean ancestress.

[sgeorge1701]

From the Iliad:

www.gutenberg.org/files/16452/16452-h/16452-h.htm

God of the silver bow, who with thy power45
Encirclest Chrysa, and who reign'st supreme
In Tenedos and Cilla the divine,
Sminthian[5] Apollo![6] If I e'er adorned
Thy beauteous fane, or on the altar burn'd
The fat acceptable of bulls or goats,50
Grant my petition. With thy shafts avenge
On the Achaian host thy servant's tears.

AND

5. [So called on account of his having saved the people of Troas from a plague of mice, sminthos in their language meaning a mouse.—Tr.]

Apollo is known as the Mouse god - protector AND keeper of mice. (especially white mice).

Steve

[Stephanous]

The whole mouse thing sounds like it was from a specific cult. David has done tons of research and reading on the Greek Gods. If he hasn't heard of such a thing before, it is very likely that is was a specific cult of Apollo and not the general worship of him. If it was a common theme in the worship of Apollo, one of us would have probably read it by now. I could be wrong, but that is the impression that I get.

Paul

[Admin]

Still, I find it kind of cool...hehehe...

I could totally see Clara having all cats banished from the temple so the mice can be free to roam...lol

[David]

Interesting. I stand corrected. At least some cults of Apollo venerated mice. Thank you!

In a way, both Paul and Steven are correct, BTW. You see, other than Christianity (and to a much lesser extent Islam and Judaism) most other religions are extremely tolerant of intra-faith (sect) variations. The ancient Greeks didn't have the great need for orthodoxy and conformity that later civilizations (starting with the Romans, but even then only as a means of maintaining religious hegemony) did. Put another way, the Artemis of Ephesus is NOT the same goddess worshipped in Rhodes or Athens or Troy; the former being a mother-goddess and the later being huntress-goddesses. So, yes, there are religional peculiarities of faith that were SOMETIMES adopted by the wider followers and other times not (that's actually how Inanna became Ishtar became Astarte became Qetest -and- Aphrodite became Venus) -- and how Dionysus actually joined the Olympian pantheon (he was originally a foreign, Eastern god).

I'm intrigued that I've never heard this connection of Apollo to mice before -- perhaps I need to go back over my Greek myth books! It could be a regional phenomena, or a broader practice. In either case, thank you, Steven, for digging this up. Unless I find info to the contrary, I'm good making this a "general" trait of Apollo's clerics. And thus, yet another reason clerics of Apollo and Bast find themselves in conflict...

[sgeorge1701]

Arthur now REALLY wants to find out what this little Magical mouse with the red eyes does...

heheheheheheh.

Glad I could help with a little bit of Olympian triviata!

Steve