[47] _Smintheus_ an epithet taken from sminthos, the Phrygian name for a _mouse_, was applied to Apollo for having put an end to a plague of mice which had harassed that territory. Strabo, however, says, that when the Teucri were migrating from Crete, they were told by an oracle to settle in that place, where they should not be attacked by the original inhabitants of the land, and that, having halted for the night, a number of field-mice came and gnawed away the leathern straps of their baggage, and thongs of their armour. In fulfilment of the oracle, they settled on the spot, and raised a temple to Sminthean Apollo. Grote, “History of Greece,” i. p. 68, remarks that the “worship of Sminthean Apollo, in various parts of the Troad and its neighboring territory, dates before the earliest period of Æolian colonization.”