Byron in his lines in the Hebrew Melodies on the ‘Destruction of Sennacherib’ has caught the passionate note of fervid patriotism, on which the chosen race celebrated their deliverance from the heathen enemy by the might of their own God, and has retained the imagery and simple diction of the Bible story:
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, And breathed on the face of the foe as he passed: And the eyes of the sleepers wax’d deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still.
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord.
Herodotus[22] relates that the tradition of this wonderful deliverance lived on in Egypt also. His cicerone in the temple of Ptah at Memphis told him the following tale. ‘The next king was a priest of Vulcan, called Sethos. This monarch despised and neglected the warrior class of the Egyptians, as though he did not need their services. Among other indignities which he offered them, he took from them the lands which they possessed under all the previous kings, consisting of twelve acres of choice land for each warrior. Afterwards, therefore, when Sennacherib, king of the Arabians and Assyrians, marched his vast army into Egypt, the warriors one and all refused to come to his aid. On this the monarch, greatly distressed, entered into the inner sanctuary, and before the image of the god bewailed the fate that impended over him. As he wept he fell asleep, and dreamed that the god came and stood at his side, bidding him be of good cheer, and go boldly forth to meet the Arabian host, which would do him no hurt, as he himself would send those who should help him. Sethos then, relying on the dream, collected such of the Egyptians as were willing to follow him, who were none of them warriors, but traders, artisans, and market people, and with these marched to Pelusium, which commands the entrance into Egypt, and there pitched his camp. As the two armies lay here opposite one another, there came in the night a multitude of field-mice, which devoured all the quivers and bow-strings of the enemy and ate the thongs by which they managed their shields. Next morning they commenced their flight, and great multitudes fell, as they had no arms with which to defend themselves. There stands to this day in the temple of Vulcan a stone statue of Sethos, with a mouse in his hand, and an inscription to this effect: “Look on me and learn to reverence the gods.”’
Strabo[23] has a story of mice eating up the bow-strings, and a variant of it appears also in Chinese annals,[24] so that it may be regarded as merely a figurative expression for some providential deliverance from an enemy, and in the case of Sennacherib the medium of deliverance was pestilence.
It is impossible to say whose was the statue Herodotus ascribes to Sethos, for no king Sethos is known in Egyptian history. Perhaps it was a statue of Horus, the Egyptian equivalent of Apollo, or not impossibly of Apollo himself, for we have abundant evidence of the association of the mouse with Apollo. In the pestilence of the Iliad,[25] Chryses addresses him as Mouse-God (Σμινθεύς). Strabo says that the statue of Apollo Smintheus in Chrysa, a town of the Troad, had a mouse beneath his foot: so also has a bronze coin now in the British Museum. De Witte[26] has figured coins of Alexandria, the more ancient Hamaxitus, in the Troad, in which Apollo Smintheus is represented with his bow, and a mouse on his hand. Aelian[27] says that an effigy of the mouse stood beside the tripod of Apollo. An ancient bas-relief, of uncertain date, illustrating the Homeric plague and the offerings of the Greeks to Apollo Smintheus, also shows a mouse on a tripod. Another shows Apollo with a mouse beneath his chin: so, too, does a coin of Tenedos. White mice were actually kept beneath the altar in the temple of Apollo Smintheus at Hamaxitus, and were fed at the public expense. Strabo[28] says that the worship of Apollo Smintheus extended to the whole coast of Asia Minor and to the neighbouring islands.
Many votive offerings in the form of mice have been found, at Alexandria Troas,[29] in Palestine,[30] and elsewhere, and Strabo suggests that the worship of mice originated in a desire to propitiate mice, so as to induce them not to ravage the cornfields. The propitiation of animals,[31] and particularly of those that infest the crops, is common in the worship of primitive men. The Philistines are said to have made images of the mice that marred their land, and sent them out of their country, so as to induce the real mice to depart also. In a later stage of worship, when a god has supplanted the animal, the god is propitiated instead of the pest itself: hence Mouse Apollo,[32] Locust Apollo,[33] Wolf Apollo,[34] and Zeus Averter of Flies.[35] Even lowlier pests are absorbed into the godhead, so that we have Apollo Erythibius[36] (ἐρυσίβη = mildew), and the Romans personified it and worshipped it as Robigus[37] (robigo = mildew). The Chams of Indo-China offer sacrifices to a rude pillar-idol, called Yang-tikuh (god-rat), when swarms of rats infest the fields.[38] Thus Apollo seems to stand in the same relation to the mouse, as Asclepius to the serpent. He not only sends pestilence, but also wards it off both from man and from crops. And viewing all the facts we may conclude with some certainty that the association of mice with famine-pestilence was well recognized, but of any knowledge at this time of the association of rats with plague there is little evidence.
Plutarch[39] asserts that the Persian Magi killed all their mice and rats, because they and the gods they worshipped entertained a natural antipathy to them, a feeling which, he says, they shared with the Arabians and Ethiopians. One is curious to know what may have been the real ground of this antipathy, for which Plutarch advances the current explanation. More than likely it was that experience had taught these nations the relation of these animals to famine and perhaps to pestilence as well.
Nicholas Poussin (1593-1665) painted a picture, now in the Louvre, of the [plague of Ashdod]. An inferior replica hangs in the National Gallery, and yet another in the Academy at Lisbon. Horror is the dominant note of a composition that is full of movement. High up between the columns of a temple stands the ark of God. Beside it the body of Dagon lies prostrate on its pedestal, with head and hands lying below. A priest points out with his hand the mutilated image to a group of awe-stricken men, who from their air of authority seem to be elders of the people. A swarm of rats has invaded the town. The streets are strewn with dead and dying of each sex and of every age, and bearers carry away the corpses. Broken columns, lying here and there among the plague-stricken, heighten the sense of death and destruction. In the centre of the foreground is a group that Poussin has borrowed from Raphael. A woman with bared breasts lies dead between her two infants: one is dead, the other is approaching the dead mother’s breast. The father stoops down with hand stretched out to hold it back: with his other he muffles his mouth and nose to shut out infection. To the right another man holds back an older child who is coming towards the dead woman. One man is huddled up in a dying convulsion, another lies exhausted on a broken pillar. On the steps a sick man implores assistance from one who hurries past him to avoid infection. To the left a man with pity depicted on his face regards another writhing in agony. The whole scene is set in the centre of the town in an open space surrounded by massive buildings in the classical style that Poussin acquired among the ruined monuments of Rome. None of the bodies show any distinctive signs of plague, the disease clearly indicated by the presence of swarms of rats.