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Here, as elsewhere (cf. i. 24. 8), a votive offering has determined the form of the tradition. The statue had originally nothing to do with the events described, but represented the god Horus, to whom the mouse was sacred; the Greeks explained it from the legends of Apollo. Strabo (604) tells a story of mice eating σκύτινα τῶν ὅπλων, at Amaxitus in the Troad, where (at Chryse) Apollo was commemorated by a statue of Scopas, with a mouse under his foot. Spiegelberg however (Z. A. S. 43, 94), thinks that the story was older than the statue, and was attached to this by Semitic settlers (cf. 112. 2 Τυρίων στρατόπεδον).

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