In C. and M. (p. 106) I describe the social aspects of totemism. I ask
if there are traces of it in Greece. Suppose, for argument's sake, that
in prehistoric Greece the mouse had been a totem, as it is among the
Oraons of Bengal. {80} In that case (1) places might be named from a
mouse tribe; (2) mice might be held sacred per se; (3) the mouse name
might be given locally to a god who superseded the mouse in pride of
place; (4) images of the mouse might be associated with that of the god,
(5) and used as a local badge or mark; (6) myths might be invented to
explain the forgotten cause of this prominence of the mouse. If all
these notes occur, they would raise a presumption in favour of totemism
in the past of Greece. I then give evidence in detail, proving that all
these six facts do occur among Greeks of the Troads and sporadically
elsewhere. I add that, granting for the sake of argument that these
traces may point to totemism in the remote past, the mouse, though
originally a totem, '_need not have been an Aryan totem_' (p. 116).
I offer a list of other animals closely connected with Apollo, giving him
a beast's name (wolf, ram, dolphin), and associated with him in myth and
art. In M. R. R. I apply similar arguments in the case of Artemis and
the Bear, of Dionysus and the Bull, Demeter and the Pig, and so forth.
Moreover, I account for the myths of descent of Greek human families from
gods disguised as dogs, ants, serpents, bulls, and swans, on the
hypothesis that kindreds who originally, in totemistic fashion, traced to
beasts sans phrase, later explained their own myth to themselves by
saying that the paternal beast was only a god in disguise and en bonne
fortune.
This hypothesis at least 'colligates the facts,' and brings them into
intelligible relationship with widely-diffused savage institutions and
myths.
The Greek Mouse-totem?
My theory connecting Apollo Smintheus and the place-names derived from
mice with a possible prehistoric mouse-totem gave me, I confess,
considerable satisfaction. But in Mr. Frazer's Golden Bough (ii. 129-
132) is published a group of cases in which mice and other vermin are
worshipped for prudential reasons--to get them to go away. In the
Classical Review (vol. vi. 1892) Mr. Ward Fowler quotes Aristotle and
AElian on plagues of mice, like the recent invasion of voles on the
Border sheep-farms. He adopts the theory that the sacred mice were
adored by way of propitiating them. Thus Apollo may be connected with
mice, not as a god who superseded a mouse-totem, but as an expeller of
mice, like the worm-killing Heracles, and the Locust-Heracles, and the
Locust-Apollo. {81a} The locust is still painted red, salaamed to, and
set free in India, by way of propitiating his companions. {81b} Thus the
Mouse-Apollo (Smintheus) would be merely a god noted for his usefulness
in getting rid of mice, and any worship given to mice (feeding them,
placing their images on altars, their stamp on coins, naming places after
them, and so on) would be mere acts of propitiation.
There would be no mouse-totem in the background. I do not feel quite
convinced--the mouse being a totem, and a sacred or tabooed animal, in
India and Egypt. {82a} But I am content to remain in a balance of
opinion. That the Mouse is the Night (Gubernatis), or the Lightning
(Grohmann), I am disinclined to believe. Philologists are very apt to
jump at contending meteorological explanations of mice and such small
deer without real necessity, and an anthropologist is very apt to jump at
an equally unnecessary and perhaps equally undemonstrated totem.