When the Philistines took the ark of the Lord from the camp of the Israelites, as recorded in 1 Samuel iv., a plague of mice was sent to devastate their lands; whereupon the Philistines returned the ark, together with a trespass-offering, which included five golden mice, as an atonement for their sacrilegious act. In mediæval legendary lore rats figure not unfrequently as avengers. The Polish king, Popiel II., who ascended the throne in the year 820, rendered himself obnoxious to his subjects by his immorality and tyranny, and, according to tradition, Heaven sent against him a multitude of rats, which pursued him constantly. The king and his family sought refuge in a castle situated on an island in the middle of Lake Goplo, on the Prussian frontier. But the rats finally invaded this stronghold and devoured the king and all belonging to him. Again, in the year 970, so runs the legend, Hatto II., Archbishop of Mayence, who had made himself hateful to his people on account of his avarice and cruelty during a season of famine, was informed by one of his servants that a vast multitude of rats were advancing along the roads leading to the palace. The bishop betook himself at once to a tower in the middle of the Rhine, near Bingen, still known as the “Mouse Tower,” where he sought safety from his pursuers. But the rats swam out to the tower, gnawed through its walls, and devoured him. We read also in “A Chronicle of the Kings of England” that, in the reign of William the Conqueror, a great lord was attacked by mice at a banquet, and “though he were removed from land to sea and from sea to land again,” the mice pursued him to his death. Rats and mice were not, however, the only agents employed as avengers. In the year 350, during a long siege of the Roman stronghold, Nisibis, in Mesopotamia, by the Persian king, Sapor II., the inhabitants besought their bishop, St. James, to utter a malediction against the enemy. Accordingly the prelate, standing on one of the wall towers, prayed God that a host of flies might be sent to attack the Persians, and tradition has it that the prayer was answered at once. A multitude of the insects descended upon the besiegers, their horses, and elephants; and men and animals, thus goaded to frenzy, were compelled to retreat, and so the siege was raised. The Philistines of old worshiped a special deity, Beelzebub, to whom they attributed the power of destroying flies.[461] This same region is still infested with insect plagues; but the modern traveler, who has no faith in Beelzebub, is more likely to employ fly-traps and energetic practical measures. Such are a few instances of the supernatural employment of vermin and insects as instruments of vengeance; and we need hardly wonder that, conversely, people in olden times should avail themselves of supernatural methods in order to protect themselves or their property from the ravages of these noxious creatures.