I came across this leather mouse in May 2020, almost one year ago to this very day, when I saw Caroline Lawrence (author of the Roman Mysteries series) had linked to its discovery at Vindolanda, a Roman auxiliary fort site located in Northumberland, England. I was delighted by its design, which seems to be rather ad hoc, and could easily be from a different time or place. I love its triangular head, its angular lines, the detail of its turned ears, and the obvious affection and playfulness with which it was made.   

It got me thinking about our very curious relationship with mice, and about why, despite being considered pests, they have been portrayed so sympathetically in art and literature throughout the times.

Their small size probably benefits them when it comes to how we perceive them, and perhaps they win points with us by often appearing scared and shy when they are in our presence, regardless of whether or not they have boldly torn several holes in the rice packet and left dozens of droppings inside our kitchen cupboard. Their eyes are expressive, and their paws look very much like our own hands.

That may be why it is not in the least jarring to see Beatrix Potter’s mice dressed in human clothes – it makes perfect sense that they would use those little paws to do up the buttons in their jackets and straighten their shirt collars. There is something completely domestic about them – very literally – and it comes naturally to us to reimagine a miniature domesticity for them that mirrors our own.

There are many wonderful books about mice who are brave, noble, and often quick-witted. Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh is a good example of this: widowed field mouse Mrs Frisby comes into contact with a world of hyper-intelligent laboratory rats, who are developing an increasingly sophisticated community with technology, books, and agriculture, and who she has to join to survive and escape danger. William Steig’s Dr de Soto features some kind-hearted but clever dentist mice, who find themselves in a pickle when they have to treat a fox with a toothache and try to avoid getting eaten in the process. Arnold Lobel’s Mouse Soup and Mouse Tales feature very sympathetic renderings of mice – clever, funny, warm, and domestic, down to Father Mouse telling stories to his children tucked up in bed. More recently, the fantastic Two Mice by Sergio Ruzzier provides a great example of how we feel towards these little rodents – who could possibly not root for these little guys through all of the dangers and perils they encounter?

We seem to like them despite ourselves – sure, they may be pests, but look at their tiny paws and quivering whiskers!

Mice are in fact quite a common subject in Roman art and objects – there is a lovely depiction of a mouse with a walnut in the Asàrotos òikos mosaic (‘Unswept floor mosaic’) exhibited in the Vatican Museum, which once covered the floor of a dining room in a villa on the Aventine Hill in Rome. The mouse is upside down at the top of the mosaic, and here is a close-up right side up.

A cursory look through the British Museum catalogue of Roman objects brings up many featuring mice – a possible baby feeder from 310-300 BC Sicily, which recalls our Vösendorf baby bottles; a lovely Late Roman silver mouse charm from 4th-5th C;  and a good number of bronze figures such as this one, featuring a mouse nibbling on something between its paws.  

From what I am able to gather, these little figures or statuettes have traditionally been linked to Apollo Smintheus – Apollo as ‘Lord of Mice’ (see temple of Apollon Smintheion in Turkey) – but a 2014 paper (P. Kiernan) suggests that they were attached to oil lamps, candelabra and other pieces of furniture, and refer to ‘the common problem of  mice gnawing at wicks and drinking lamp oil’.

I can’t think of any other animals that are bothersome to humans in this way and still inspire fondness in us. Would we ever think the same of cockroaches or ants? Our relationship with rats, though not as good as it is with mice, is also an interesting one and has also given us a good number of heroes. But then, to the Romans, a rat was a mus maximus, simply a bigger version of a mouse, mus minimus.  

Thousands of mice bones were found when the granaries at Vindolanda were excavated, from years after years of gobbling up the grain that dropped through the cracks. Was this leather mouse a toy for a child? A joke of some kind?

Just as I was finishing my weekly investigations, I came across a blog entirely devoted to articles about mice in art throughout history. I then saw that the author, Lorna Owen, had published a lovely book about mice in art, called Mouse Muse, which delves into a selection of art depictions of mice throughout history, featuring more than 80 pieces, including Bosch, Klimt, a Joseph Beuys performance, Hokusai, and Roman bronze mice.

With this toy, as with other ancient playthings, what most gives me pleasure is equating each of those little marks on the body to time retrieved from the past – a moment of shared, quiet intimacy with its maker, whose lips were perhaps pursed in concentration as they cut out the bits between the legs and the body, and broke into a satisfied expression as they showed the finished piece – squeak!