§ 2. Mouse Apollo and Wolf Apollo.

Greek gods who took titles from vermin. Mouse (Smintheus) Apollo.

Some of the Greek gods were worshipped under titles derived from the vermin or other pests which they were supposed to avert or exterminate. Thus we hear of Mouse Apollo,833 Locust Apollo,834 and Mildew Apollo;835 of Locust Hercules and Worm-killing Hercules;836 of Foxy Dionysus;837 and of Zeus the Fly-catcher or Averter of Flies.838 If we could trace all these and similar worships to their origin, we should probably find that they were at first addressed, not to the high gods as the protectors of mankind, but to the baleful things themselves, the mice, locusts, mildew, and so forth, with the intention of flattering and soothing them, of disarming their malignity, and of persuading them to spare their worshippers. We know that the Romans worshipped the mildew, the farmer's plague, under its own proper name.839 The ravages committed by mice among the crops both in ancient and modern times are notorious,840 and according to [pg 283] a tradition which may be substantially correct the worship of the Mouse (Smintheus) Apollo was instituted to avert them.841 The image of a mouse which stood beside Apollo's tripod in the god's temple in the Troad,842 may be compared with the golden mice which the Philistines made for the purpose of ridding themselves of the vermin; and the tame mice kept in his sanctuary, together with the white mice which lived under the altar,843 would on this hypothesis be parallel to the white mice which the Bohemian peasant still cherishes as the best way of keeping down the numbers of their grey-coated brethren.844 An Oriental counterpart of the Mouse Apollo is the ancient pillar or rude idol which the Chams of Indo-China call yang-tikuh or “god rat,” and to which they offer sacrifices whenever rats infest their fields in excessive numbers.845

Wolfish Apollo.

Another epithet applied to Apollo which probably admits of a similar explanation is Wolfish.846 Various legends set forth how the god received the title of Wolfish because he exterminated wolves;847 indeed this function was definitely attributed to him by the epithet Wolf-slayer.848 Arguing from the analogy of the preceding cases, we may suppose that at first the wolves themselves were propitiated by fair words and sacrifices to induce them to spare man and beast; and that at a later time, when the Greeks, or rather the enlightened portion of them, had outgrown this rude form of worship, they transferred the duty of keeping off the wolves to a beneficent deity who discharged the same useful office for other pests, such as mice, locusts, and mildew. A reminiscence of the direct propitiation of the fierce and dangerous beasts themselves is preserved in the legends told to explain the origin of the Lyceum or Place of Wolves at Athens and of the sanctuary of Wolfish Apollo at Sicyon. It is said that once, when Athens was infested by wolves, Apollo commanded sacrifices to be offered on the Place of Wolves and the smell [pg 284] proved fatal to the animals.849 Similarly at Sicyon, when the flocks suffered heavily from the ravages of wolves, the same god directed the shepherds to set forth meat mixed with a certain bark, and the wolves devoured the tainted meat and perished.850 These legends probably reflect in a distorted form an old custom of sacrificing to the wolves, in other words of feeding them to mollify their ferocity and win their favour. We know that such a custom prevailed among the Letts down to comparatively recent times. In the month of December, about Christmas time, they sacrificed a goat to the wolves, with strange idolatrous rites, at a cross-road, for the purpose of inducing the wolves to spare the flocks and herds. After offering the sacrifice they used to brag that no beast of theirs would fall a victim to the ravening maw of a wolf for all the rest of that year, no, not though the pack were to run right through the herd. Sacrifices of this sort are reported to have been secretly offered by the Letts as late as the seventeenth century;851 and if we knew more of peasant life in ancient Greece we might find that on winter days, while Aristotle was expounding his philosophy in the Lyceum or Place of Wolves at Athens, the Attic peasant was still carrying forth, in the crisp frosty air, his offering to the wolves, which all night long had been howling round his sheepfold in a snowy glen of Parnes or Pentelicus.

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