Custom and Myth

APOLLO AND THE MOUSE.


Why is Apollo, especially the Apollo of the Troad, he who showered the
darts of pestilence among the Greeks, so constantly associated with a
mouse?  The very name, Smintheus, by which his favourite priest calls on
him in the 'Iliad' (i. 39), might be rendered 'Mouse Apollo,' or 'Apollo,
Lord of Mice.'  As we shall see later, mice lived beneath the altar, and
were fed in the holy of holies of the god, and an image of a mouse was
placed beside or upon his sacred tripod.  The ancients were puzzled by
these things, and, as will be shown, accounted for them by
'mouse-stories,' [Greek], so styled by Eustathius, the mediaeval
interpreter of Homer.  Following our usual method, let us ask whether
similar phenomena occur elsewhere, in countries where they are
intelligible.  Did insignificant animals elsewhere receive worship: were
their effigies elsewhere placed in the temples of a purer creed?  We find
answers in the history of Peruvian religion.

After the Spanish conquest of Peru, one of the European adventurers, Don
Garcilasso de la Vega, married an Inca princess.  Their son, also named
Garcilasso, was born about 1540.  His famous book, 'Commentarias Reales,'
contains the most authentic account of the old Peruvian beliefs.
Garcilasso was learned in all the learning of the Europeans, and, as an
Inca on the mother's side, had claims on the loyalty of the defeated
race.  He set himself diligently to collect both their priestly and
popular traditions, and his account of them is the more trustworthy as it
coincides with what we know to have been true in lands with which
Garcilasso had little acquaintance.

* * * * *

To Garcilasso's mind, Peruvian religion seems to be divided into two
periods--the age before, and the age which followed the accession of the
Incas, and their establishment of sun-worship as the creed of the State.
In the earlier period, the pre-Inca period, he tells us 'an Indian was
not accounted honourable unless he was descended from a fountain, river,
or lake, or even from the sea, or from a wild animal, such as a bear,
lion, tiger, eagle, or the bird they call cuntur (condor), or some other
bird of prey.' {104a}  To these worshipful creatures 'men offered what
they usually saw them eat' (i. 53).  But men were not content to adore
large and dangerous animals.  'There was not an animal, how vile and
filthy soever, that they did not worship as a god,' including 'lizards,
toads, and frogs.'  In the midst of these superstitions the Incas
appeared.  Just as the tribes claimed descent from animals, great or
small, so the Incas drew _their_ pedigree from the sun, which they adored
like the gens of the Aurelii in Rome. {104b}  Thus every Indian had his
pacarissa, or, as the North American Indians say, totem, {105a} a natural
object from which he claimed descent, and which, in a certain degree, he
worshipped.  Though sun-worship became the established religion, worship
of the animal pacarissas was still tolerated.  The sun-temples also
contained huacas, or images, of the beasts which the Indians had
venerated. {105b}  In the great temple of Pachacamac, the most spiritual
and abstract god of Peruvian faith, 'they worshipped a she-fox and an
emerald.  The devil also appeared to them, and spoke in the form of a
tiger, very fierce.' {105c}  This toleration of an older and cruder, in
subordination to a purer, faith is a very common feature in religious
evolution.  In Catholic countries, to this day, we may watch, in Holy
Week, the Adonis feast described by Theocritus, {105d} and the procession
and entombment of the old god of spring.

'The Incas had the good policy to collect all the tribal animal gods into
their temples in and round Cuzco, in which the two leading gods were the
Master of Life, and the Sun.'  Did a process of this sort ever occur in
Greek religion, and were older animal gods ever collected into the
temples of such deities as Apollo?

* * * * *

While a great deal of scattered evidence about many animals consecrated
to Greek gods points in this direction, it will be enough, for the
present, to examine the case of the Sacred Mice.  Among races which are
still in the totemistic stage, which still claim descent from animals and
from other objects, a peculiar marriage law generally exists, or can be
shown to have existed.  No man may marry a woman who is descended from
the same ancestral animal, and who bears the same totem-name, and carries
the same badge or family crest, as himself.  A man descended from the
Crane, and whose family name is Crane, cannot marry a woman whose family
name is Crane.  He must marry a woman of the Wolf, or Turtle, or Swan, or
other name, and her children keep her family title, not his.  Thus, if a
Crane man marries a Swan woman, the children are Swans, and none of them
may marry a Swan; they must marry Turtles, Wolves, or what not, and
_their_ children, again, are Turtles, or Wolves.  Thus there is
necessarily an eternal come and go of all the animal names known in a
district.  As civilisation advances these rules grow obsolete.  People
take their names from the father, as among ourselves.  Finally the
dwellers in a given district, having become united into a local tribe,
are apt to drop the various animal titles and to adopt, as the name of
the whole tribe, the name of the chief, or of the predominating family.
Let us imagine a district of some twenty miles in which there are Crane,
Wolf, Turtle, and Swan families.  Long residence together, and common
interests, have welded them into a local tribe.  The chief is of the Wolf
family, and the tribe, sinking family differences and family names, calls
itself 'the Wolves.'  Such tribes were probably, in the beginning, the
inhabitants of the various Egyptian towns which severally worshipped the
wolf, or the sheep, or the crocodile, and abstained religiously (except
on certain sacrificial occasions) from the flesh of the animal that gave
them its name. {107}