were forbidden
to eat 'the weasel, and the mouse, and the tortoise after his kind.'
That unclean beasts, beasts not to be eaten, were originally totems,
Prof. Robertson Smith infers from Ezekiel (viii. 10, 11), where 'we
find seventy of the elders of Israel--that is, the heads of
houses--worshipping in a chamber which had on its walls the figures of
all manner of unclean' (tabooed) 'creeping things, and quadrupeds,
_even all the idols of the House of Israel_.' Some have too hastily
concluded that the mouse was a sacred animal among the neighbouring
Philistines. After the Philistines had captured the Ark and set it in
the house of Dagon, the people were smitten with disease. They
therefore, in accordance with a well-known savage magical practice,
made five golden representations of the diseased part, and five golden
mice, as 'a trespass offering to the Lord of Israel,' and so restored
the Ark.[136] Such votive offerings are common still in Catholic
countries, and the mice of gold by no means prove that the Philistines
had ever worshipped mice.

* * * * *

Turning to India from the Mediterranean basin, and the Aryan, Semitic,
and Egyptian tribes on its coasts, we find that the mouse was the
sacred animal of Rudra. 'The mouse, Rudra, is thy beast,' says the
Yajur Veda, as rendered by Grohmann in his _Apollo Smintheus_.
Grohmann recognises in Rudra a deity with most of the characteristics
of Apollo. In later Indian mythology, the mouse is an attribute of
Ganeca, who, like Apollo Smintheus, is represented in art with his
foot upon a mouse.

Such are the chief appearances of the mouse in ancient religion. If he
really was a Semitic totem, it may, perhaps, be argued that his
prevalence in connection with Apollo is the result of a Semitic leaven
in Hellenism. Hellenic invaders may have found Semitic mouse-tribes at
home, and incorporated the alien stock deity with their own
Apollo-worship. In that case the mouse, while still originally a
totem, would not be an Aryan totem. But probably the myths and rites
of the mouse, and their diffusion, are more plausibly explained on our
theory than on that of De Gubernatis: 'The Pagan Sun-god crushes
under his foot the Mouse of Night. When the cat's away, the mice may
play; the shadows of night dance when the moon is absent.'[137] This
is one of the quaintest pieces of mythological logic. Obviously, when
the cat (the moon) is away, the mice (the shadows)