Practical joke or toy? Leather ‘mouse’ shows Romans' playful side

The Guardian

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Unique 2,000-year-old discovery made by staff in lockdown at Northumberland’s Vindolanda Museum

The Roman author Pliny the Younger advised “kissing the hairy muzzle of a mouse” as a cure for the common cold. His fellow countrymen linked mice to the god Apollo, who could bring deadly plague upon them with his arrows.

So they might not have seen the funny side of a lifelike mouse made out of a strip of leather which has been newly discovered at the Roman fort of Vindolanda, south of Hadrian’s Wall, near Hexham, Northumberland.

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