religion so long. We have seen mice revered, a god with a mouse-name,
the mouse-name recurring in many places, the huaca, or idol, of the mouse
preserved in the temples of the god, and the mouse-badge used in several
widely severed localities. It remains (4) to examine the myths about
mice. These, in our opinion, were probably told to account for the
presence of the huaca of the mouse in temples, and for the occurrence of
the animal in religion, and his connection with Apollo.

A singular mouse-myth, narrated by Herodotus, is worth examining for
reasons which will appear later, though the events are said to have
happened on Egyptian soil. {111c} According to Herodotus, one Sethos, a
priest of Hephaestus (Ptah), was king of Egypt. He had disgraced the
military class, and he found himself without an army when Sennacherib
invaded his country. Sethos fell asleep in the temple, and the god,
appearing to him in a vision, told him that divine succour would come to
the Egyptians. {112a} In the night before the battle, field-mice gnawed
the quivers and shield-handles of the foe, who fled on finding themselves
thus disarmed. 'And now,' says Herodotus, 'there standeth a stone image
of this king in the temple of Hephaestus, and in the hand of the image a
mouse, and there is this inscription, "Let whoso looketh on me be
pious."'

Prof. Sayce {112b} holds that there was no such person as Sethos, but
that the legend 'is evidently Egyptian, not Greek, and the name of
Sennacherib, as well as the fact of the Assyrian attack, is correct.' The
legend also, though Egyptian, is 'an echo of the biblical account of the
destruction of the Assyrian army,' an account which omits the mice. 'As
to the mice, here,' says Prof. Sayce, 'we have to do again with the Greek
dragomen (sic). The story of Sethos was attached to the statue of some
deity which was supposed to hold a mouse in its hand.' It must have been