We have now shown traces, at least, of various ways in which an early tribal religion of the mouse--the mouse _pacarissa_, as the Peruvians said--may have been perpetuated. When we consider that the superseding of the mouse by Apollo must have occurred, if it did occur, long before Homer, we may rather wonder that the mouse left his mark on Greek religion so long. We have seen mice revered, a god with a mouse-name, the mouse-name recurring in many places, the _huaca_, or idol of the mouse, preserved in the temples of the god, and the mouse-badge used in several widely severed localities. It remains (4) to examine the myths about mice. These, in our opinion, were probably told to account for the presence of the _huaca_ of the mouse in temples, and for the occurrence of the animal in religion, and his connection with Apollo. A singular mouse-myth, narrated by Herodotus, is worth examining for reasons which will appear later, though the events are said to have happened on Egyptian soil.[126] According to Herodotus, one Sethos, a priest of Hephæstus (Ptah), was king of Egypt. He had disgraced the military class, and he found himself without an army when Sennacherib invaded his country. Sethos fell asleep in the temple, and the god, appearing to him in a vision, told him that divine succour would come to the Egyptians.[127] In the night before the battle, field-mice gnawed the quivers and shield-handles of the foe, who fled on finding themselves thus disarmed. 'And now,' says Herodotus, 'there standeth a stone image of this king in the temple of Hephæstus, and in the hand of the image a mouse, and there is this inscription, "Let whoso looketh on me be pious."'