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 stamped
their money with a mouse gnawing an ear of corn. The people of Cumae
employed a mouse dormant. Paoli fancied that certain mice on Roman
medals might be connected with the family of Mus, but this is rather
guesswork. {111b}

We have now shown traces, at least, of various ways in which an early
tribal religion of the mouse--the mouse pacarissa, as the Peruvians
said--may have been perpetuated. When we consider that the superseding
of the mouse by Apollo must have occurred, if it did occur, long before
Homer, we may rather wonder that the mouse left his mark on Greek