Apollo Sminthius

A Coin depicting Apollo Sminthius (Apollo lord of the mice) with his plague causing bow and a mouse/rat at his feet. Minted in Alexandria, Troas/Troad. Around 300 AD. Currently in The British Museum, Department of Coins. London...

The worship of Apollo Smintheus (or Apollo Sminthius) extended only to Asia Minor and not the Greek mainland.  Alexandria in Troas was the center of this cult. This is one of the strongest arguments for the thesis that the origin of the Apollo cult was Asia minor...

We of course know that Apollo originated much further East, in Mesopotamia...If you don't know what I am talking about check my article "Apollo, the great archer".  

In it I ask and answer the question: Why was Apollo armed with bow and arrows? Why was he "Apollo who shoots afar"? And why "as he goes through the house of Zeus, the gods tremble before him and all spring up from their seats when he draws near, as he bends his bright bow"?

In it I also talk about Apollo's link to pestilence and plagues and I explain why Apollo "was a god who could bring...deadly plague with his arrows". And I also talk about Apollo's link to Nergal, the Mesopotamian god of pestilence and plague...

It all has to do with the fact that Sirius and the surrounding stars, which were in Mesopotamia known as bow and arrow, rose with the sun (Apollo/Nergal, destructive side of Shamash), in Jul/Aug, the main season for epidemics in Mesopotamia...

I talked about this here in my post "The lord of flies" about Beelzebub, the lord of the flies, who was identified by Jews and Christians with Satan...I will in this article like to show that behind this nickname hides the old Mesopotamian God of Death, Nergal, The Destructive Summer Sun...

And not just in Mesopotamia. Every disease that either started or peaked in Jul/Aug in Mesopotamia, also started or peaked in Jul/Aug in Turkey...Including the area of Troas/Troad...And guess what's in the area of Troas/Troad? Troy. 

And guess where the Apollo Sminthius is first mentioned? At the very beginning of the Homer 's Iliad I, 39.

There, Apollo 's priest, Chryses, after Agamemnon had kidnapped his daughter, prays to Apollo Sminthius to punish the Greeks "with his silver bow and arrows" (the ones that bring pestilence and plague). And Apollo obliged...

So what was the disease that Apollo Sminthius stroke the Greeks with? Well, considering that it was the "Apollo, the lord of the mice", most people, me including, believe that it could have been a black plague...

Black plague is caused by a bacteria, Yersinia pestis, which is transmitted to people by flees which live on rats, mice and other small rodents...

I talked about it in my post "Burned house horizon", in which I asked the question: Why did Neolithic Central Europeans often burn their settlements down to the ground only to rebuild them again? Well, apparently "it could be a ritual" (read: no one knows)...But interestingly, until recently, people did exactly that to get rid of black plague.

Now, mice breed during the summer and autumn, and the peak breeding season for harvest, wood and house mice in Europe and  is in Jul/Aug...

Right after the grain harvest. In Leo. Apollo/Nergal time of the year...Rats also mostly breed during summer and autumn...

According to historical records 1, 2, 3, the main black plague season in Mediterranean especially in the area near Istanbul, which is where Troy is located, was summer, the hottest and driest time of the year...

What about the plague that Iliad says Apollo had unleashed on the Greeks? When did that plague happen? Well, we don't really know. We know that the whole Iliad story unfolded over 45 days, and that the plague happened at the very beginning.

Now half way through the story, in the book 12, during the fierce battle between Trojans and Greeks in front of the Greek camp, a warning was sent from Zeus that can help us determine when the story told in Iliad took place...

I talked about it in my post "Lakonian snake eagle kylix", about this Black-Figure Kylix depicting a snake eagle flying to the left, gripping the neck of a snake in its beak and clutching the serpent's long, undulating body in its talons. 530 BC...

In which I said: The snake eagle is a migratory summer visitor in Western Anatolia, where Troy is located...So the only time when the Trojans could have seen a snake eagle flying over the battlefield carrying a snake in its beak was during the summer, Apr/May - Sep/Oct...

Significant? 🙂 I asked in this post...

Well, yes, as it turns out. Cause that would mean that the story from Iliad takes place during the summer, the hottest time of the year, the Apollo/Nergal, mice/rats, plague time of the year...

And so silver arrows rained down on the Greeks fired by Apollo from his silver bow...Silver...Much better colour for star constellation bow and arrow (Sirius and surrounding stars), which rises in the morning with the sun, Apollo/Nergal, during the mice/rat/plague season...

While shooting stars rain down bringing plague. Or so the ancients believed...But some people don't agree that the plague that Apollo unleashed on the Greeks was black plague, or that rats were in any way involved. Like the authors of "The Sminthian Apollo and the Epidemic among the Achaeans at Troy"...

These are their arguments: "Homer gives no symptoms of the pestilence which killed the Greeks at Troy but states that the mules and dogs died before the men. The disease therefore cannot have been black plague. Man is susceptible to it but equines and dogs are not..."

"The disease which is the best candidate for killing is equine encephalomyelitis which at the present time kills equines 7 to 14 days before symptoms appear in man. The death of dogs in modern epidemics is unusual but, experimentally, young dogs are susceptible..."

"In the epidemic at Troy rodents played no part. The arrows were the direct transmitter of the disease. Mosquitoes, as we now know, can transmit a number of diseases including equine encephalomyelitis...And there are plenty of swamps with mosquitoes around Troy..."

"Since mosquitoes are the usual vectors for equine encephalomyelitis it is possible that the terrifying sound of Apollo's bow is a metaphor for the terrifying sound of myriads of mosquitoes..."

Love this. Again, remember "Lord of the Flies" (and other flying biting insects which swarm during the hottest part of the year), Nergal, Apollo?

Interestingly, equine encephalomyelitis peak season is...Jul/Aug...So even if the Apollo's plague was equine encephalomyelitis, the timing is still very auspicious 🙂

The problem with their theory is that their first argument, that black plague only kills people, is wrong.

Byzantine author Nicephorus Gregoras, who died in 1360, reported that during the second plague:

"The calamity did not destroy men only, but many animals living with and domesticated by men. I speak of dogs and horses...even the rats that lived within the walls of the houses...". You can read about it in "Scientific Facts about the Black Death"

So, it could have been the black plague that Apollo unleashed on the Greeks or it could have been equine encephalomyelitis (although we don't know if that disease affected humans before 1939). It doesn't change anything...

Apollo lord of the mice, rats, flies, mosquitoes, plagues of all kinds, unleashed the plague on the Greeks most likely during the hottest time of the year, Jul/Aug, when silver bow rises with the sun and silver arrows rain down on earth...

That's it. Animal calendar markers to the rescue, again, I think...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...