By: Susan-Marie Cronkite, PhD.
Apollo was the Greek god of healing, music, art, dance, the light of wisdom, archery, prophecy, poetry and the arts, but he also had a darker role as the mechanism of plagues. In the guise of Apollo Aphetoros (the Archer), Apollo Smintheus (of mice) or as Apollo Parnopius (of grasshoppers), the god could punish mankind with plagues of all types ranging from diseases to hoards of vermin, or take pity on mankind, and save them from the very same plagues.
One of the most famous descriptions of Apollo’s wrath, expressed as a plague, comes from Homer’s Iliad, Book I, dating to ca. the 8th c BCE
“”Hear me,” he cried, “O god of the silver bow, that protectest Chryse and holy Cilla and rulest Tenedos with thy might, hear me oh thou of Sminthe. If I have ever decked your temple with garlands, or burned your thigh-bones in fat of bulls or goats, grant my prayer, and let your arrows avenge these my tears upon the Danaans. Thus did he pray, and Apollo heard his prayer. He came down furious from the summits of Olympus, with his bow and his quiver upon his shoulder, and the arrows rattled on his back with the rage that trembled within him. He sat himself down away from the ships with a face as dark as night, and his silver bow rang death as he shot his arrow in the midst of them. First he smote their mules and their hounds, but presently he aimed his shafts at the people themselves, and all day long the pyres of the dead were burning.
For nine whole days he shot his arrows among the people, but upon the tenth day Achilles called them in assembly…. Let us ask some priest or prophet, or some reader of dreams (for dreams, too, are of Zeus) who can tell us why Phoebus Apollo is so angry….. and whether he will accept the savour of lambs and goats without blemish, so as to take away the plague from us. [1]“
The sancutary of Apollo Smintheus on the island of Tenedos (modern Bozcaada, Turkey) housed a population of sacred mice (or rats). According to the ancient writers [2], the mice had free run of the temple and of the sacred grounds. These mice were fed, protected and also carefully observed. White mice were considered to be the most sacred of all the sacred rodents; if a large litter of white mice were born, it was considered good luck and signaled a prosperous future. C. E. Keeler [3] suggests these mice might be considered some of the first recorded white laboratory mice….
References:
[1] Homer, The Iliad. Available on-line at: http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/iliad.1.i.html
[2] Strabo, Geography XIII.i.38; Aelian, De Natura Animalium, XII.5
[3] Keeler, C.E., 1931, The Laboratory Mouse. Its Origins, Heredity and Culture. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Available on-line at: http://www.archive.org/stream/laboratorymousei00keel/laboratorymousei00keel_djvu.txt.
