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. {116}
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