trabo speaks of two places deriving their name from
Sminthus, or mouse, near the Sminthian temple, and others near Larissa.
In Rhodes and Lindus, the mouse place-name recurs, 'and in many other
districts' ([Greek]). Strabo (x. 486) names Caressus, and Poeessa, in
Ceos, among the other places which had Sminthian temples, and,
presumably, were once centres of tribes named after the mouse.

Here, then, are a number of localities in which the Mouse Apollo was
adored, and where the old mouse-name lingered. That the mice were
actually held sacred in their proper persons we learn from AElian. 'The
dwellers in Hamaxitus of the Troad worship mice,' says AElian. 'In the
temple of Apollo Smintheus, mice are nourished, and food is offered to
them, at the public expense, and white mice dwell beneath the altar.'
{109b} In the same way we found that the Peruvians fed their sacred
beasts on what they usually saw them eat.

(2) The second point in our argument has already been sufficiently
demonstrated. The mouse-name 'Smintheus' was given to Apollo in all the
places mentioned by Strabo, 'and many others.'

(3) The figure of the mouse will be associated with the god, and used as
a badge, or crest, or local mark, in places where the mouse has been a
venerated animal.

The passage already quoted from AElian informs us that there stood 'an
effigy of the mouse beside the tripod of Apollo.' In Chrysa, according
to Strabo (xiii. 604), the statue of Apollo Smintheus had a mouse beneath
his foot. The mouse on the tripod of Apollo is represented on a
bas-relief illustrating the plague, and the offerings of the Greeks to
Apollo Smintheus, as described in the first book of the 'Iliad.' {110a}

* * * * *

The mouse is a not uncommon local badge or crest in Greece. The animals
whose figures are stamped on coins, like the Athenian owl, are the most
ancient marks of cities. It is a plausible conjecture that, just as the
Iroquois when they signed treaties with the Europeans used their
totems--bear, wolf, and turtle--as seals, {110b} so the animals on
archaic Greek city coins represented crests or badges which, at some far
more remote period, had been totems.

The Argives, according to Pollux, {110c} stamped the mouse on their
coins. {110d} As there was a temple of Apollo Smintheus in Tenedos, we
naturally hear of a mouse on the coins of the island. {111a} Golzio has
published one of these mouse coins. The people of Metapontum stampe