After being kind enough to listen to the first 100 lines of the Iliad, my wife asked me about Σμινθεῦ in line 39. She said “it didn’t sound Greek.” I told her that it was a name for Apollo, but I didn’t know any more about it. After checking the LSJ, it appears that Σμινθεῦ is not etymologically Greek. It may come from the Mysian word σμίνθος or mouse (but may instead derive from the Troad place-name Σμίνθη).
Is Apollo being called by this special appellation as a vermin-exterminator because of the context? And is the word here especially unmusical (would Democritus have called the word “σίγματος”)? Or is it “just” un-Greek?
Therein is the problem. It’s clearly non Greek but our source for it being “Mysian” is from a Greek commentator rather than something we’d be more comfortable with. Mysian is barely attested - if it is Mysian how does it mean mouse? If Mysian was IE it would be unlikely (the reflex is clearly *mus, though /sm/ is a common cluster across the board it’s inapplicable here). Of course, it could just as easily not be IE in which case…well we’re lost.
We do know that there was a festival, the Sminthia, which celebrated Apollon and Dionysos in their roles of staving off mice. So we know it’s an epithet, it could a) directly mean “mouse” or b) indirectly via association with the Sminthia or c) simply be local (but c does not preclude b here). It’s rather open. For me I just take it as a local epithet from the Troad. It seems more than fitting based on what little we have (a scholiast, a festival and a month name somewhere) and the overall context. I’d have to be at my books to given a lengthier digression and I dare say that would benefit nobody given the paucity of reliable info.
Is Apollo being called by this special appellation as a vermin-exterminator because of the context? And is the word here especially unmusical (would Democritus have called the word “σίγματος”)? Or is it “just” un-Greek?
I think because of the context though, again, debatable.
Cult of Apollo Smintheus is well known in this part of the world, both on the Troad mainland and on the islands, as Homer evidently knew. Apollo Smintheus is here invoked by his own priest. There are competing foundation tales, each deploying σμινθος=mouse (said to be Cretan in one of them). One involves a plague of mice sent by Apollo, so that gives contextual affinity—Smitheus is invoked not as vermin-eradicator but as plague-giver. The place-name Sminthe will have the same etymology. Nobody really knows about the word, but it has that –νθος of the pre-Greek substrate, so it’s as Greek as Corinth.
EDIT This before I saw Scribo. “Mysian” clearly fictive. If sminthos means MYS, why, it must be MYSian!