Note 65.1 — Chapter III · THE SECOND PERIOD, 900-500 B.C.
Reading edition
The primitive population of the Troad may once have ‘worshipped’ the field-mouse, though the authority that attests it is a late and doubtful one; but when Apollo becomes in this region the civic guardian of the Æolians and the protector of their crops, he takes a title from the mouse (Σμινθεύς from σμινθός), and the mouse is carved at the side of the anthropomorphic image as a propitiatory hint to the rest of the species not to injure the corn, or as a hint to the God that mice needed regulating.65.1