Histories

Their enemies came there, too, and during the night were overrun by a horde of field mice[*](This is Hdt.'s version of the Jewish story of the pestilence which destroyed the Assyrian army before +Jerusalem [35.233,31.766] (inhabited place), Jerusalem, Israel, Asia Jerusalem. Mice are a Greek symbol of pestilence; it is Apollo Smintheus (the mouse god) who sends and then ends the plague in Hom. Il. 1. It has long been known that rats are carriers of the plague.) that gnawed quivers and bows and the handles of shields, with the result that many were killed fleeing unarmed the next day.

And to this day a stone statue of the Egyptian king stands in Hephaestus' temple, with a mouse in his hand, and an inscription to this effect: “Look at me, and believe.”