Sibyl
The word sibyl comes (via Latin) from the Greek word sibylla, meaning prophetess. The earlier oracular seeresses known as the sibyls of antiquity prophesied at certain holy sites, probably all of pre-Indo-European origin, under the divine influence of a deity, originally one of the Chthonic earth-goddesses. Later in antiquity, sibyls wandered from place to place.
Homer seems to have been unaware of a Sibyl. The first Greek writer, so far as we know, who mentions a sibyl is Heraclitus, in the 5th century BCE:
- 'The Sibyl, with frenzied mouth uttering things not to be laughed at, unadorned and unperfumed, yet reaches to a thousand years with her voice by aid of the god.' (Heraclitus, fragment 12)
Sibyls are not identified by a personal name, but by names that refer to the location of their Temenos, for shrine. The number of Sibyls
Like Heraclitus, Plato only speaks of one Sibyl, but in course of time the number increased to nine, with a tenth, the Tiburtine Sibyl, probably Etruscan in origin, added by the Romans.
According to Lactantius' Divine Institutions (i.6, 4th century CE, quoting from a lost work of Varro, 1st century BCE) these ten were those who follow. Of them, the three most famous sibyls throughout their long career were the Delphic, the Erythraean and the Cumaean. Not all the Sibyls in the following list were securely identified with an oracular shrine, and in the vague and shifting picture there is some overlap.
Main article: Persian Sibyl. The Persian Sibyl was said to be prophetic priestess presiding over the Apollonian Oracle; though her location remained vague enough so that she might be called the "Babylonian Sibyl", the Persian Sibyl is said to have foretold the exploits of Alexander the Great according to Nicanor's life of Alexander.
The Persian Sibyl, by name Sambethe, was reported to be of the family of NoahCitation needed.
- The Libyan Sibyl
- Main article: Libyan Sibyl.
The Libyan Sibyl, by name Lamia, meaning Serpent or Medusa.
Euripides mentions the Libyan Sibyl in the prologue to his tragedy Lamia.
Main article Delphic Sibyl. The oracle at Delphi was commonly known as the Pythia, though her name was also Herophile. She was the Pythian priestess of Python, an archaic chthonic serpent. Later, Sibyl or Pythia became a title given to whichever priestess manned the oracle at the time. The Sibyl sat on a tripod over a cleft in the Sibylline Rock, gaining her often puzzling predictions from it. She sang her predictions, which she received from Gaia, in an ecstatic swoon; her utterings were interpreted by attendant priests during classical times, and rendered into hexameters of notoriously difficult interpretation. Pausanias claimed that the Sibyl was "born between man and goddess, daughter of sea monsters and an immortal nymph". Others said she was sister or daughter to Apollo. Still others claimed the Sibyl received her powers from Gaia originally, who passed the oracle to Themis, who passed it to Phoebe.
Much has been made of the Pythia's breathing in vapors from the ground and eating laurel leaves. Modern reductionists dismiss the archaic propensity for visions and sometimes attempt to account for the Pythia's swoon with toxic Methane or Ethylene hydrocarbon vapors - for example, in "Questioning the Delphic oracle," in Scientific American, October 2003. Secular mythographers doubt that the visions of Teresa of Avila would be linked in any comparable way to the effects of sacerdotal wine. As for the eating of laurel leaves, reported everywhere in modern retelling, this comes only from hostile Christian satirists, who were bent on denigrating the oracle, and is not reported in any pagan context. Before descending to the shrine, the Pythia did make a burnt offering of laurel leaves (sacred to Apollo) and barley flour (sacred to Demeter, the Earth Mother, whose presence at Delphi preceded Apollo's). The Pythia is depicted in vase-paintings holding a sprig of laurel, with a laurel-crowned interlocutor.
Main article: Cimmerian Sibyl. Naevius names the Cimmerian Sibyl in his books of the Punic War and Piso in his annals.
The Sibyl's son Evander founded in Rome the shrine of Pan which is called the Lupercal.
- The Erythraean Sibyl
- Main article Erythraean Sibyl.
The word acrostic was first applied to the prophecies of the Erythraean Sibyl, which were written on leaves and arranged so that the initial letters of the leaves always formed a word.
Main article Samian Sibyl. The Samian sibyl's oracular site was atSamos.
Main article: Cumaean Sibyl. The sibyl who most concerned the Romans was the Cumaean Sibyl near the Greek city of Naples, whom Aeneas consulted before his descent to the lower world (Aeneid book VI: 10). It was she who sold to Tarquinius Superbus, the last king of Rome, the original Sibylline Books (q.v.). Christians were especially impressed with the Cumaean Sibyl too, for in Virgil's Fourth Eclogue she foretells the coming of a savior, a flattering reference to the poet's patron, whom Christians identified as Jesus.
- The Hellespontine Sibyl
- Main article: Hellespontine Sibyl.
The Hellespontian Sibyl was born in the village of Marpessus near the small town of Gergitha, during the lifetimes of Solon and Cyrus the Great. Marpessus, according to Heraclides of Pontus, was formerly within the boundaries of the Troad.
The sibylline collection at Gergis was attributed to the Hellespontine Sibyl and was preserved in the temple of Apollo at Gergis. Thence it passed to Erythrae, where it became famous.
- The Phrygian Sibyl
- Main article: Phrygian Sibyl.
- The Tiburtine Sibyl
- Main article: Tiburtine Sibyl.
The mythic meeting of Caesar Augustus with the Sibyl, of whom he inquired whether he should be worshiped as a god, was a favored motif of Christian artists. Whether the sibyl in question was the Etruscan Sibyl of Tibur or the Greek Sibyl of Cumae is not always clear. The Christian author Lactantius had no hesitation in identifying the sibyl in question as the Tiburtine sibyl, nevertheless. He gave a circumstantial account of the pagan sibyls that is useful mostly as a guide to their identifications, as seen by 4th century Christians:
- "The Tiburtine Sibyl, by name Albunea, is worshiped at Tibur as a goddess, near the banks of the Anio, in which stream her image is said to have been found, holding a book in her hand. Her oracular responses the Senate transferred into the capitol." (Divine Institutes I.vi)
An apocalyptic pseudo-prophecy exists, attributed to the Tiburtine Sibyl , written ca 380 CE, but with revisions and interpolations added at later dates . It purports to prophesy, after the fact (see Vaticinium ex eventu), the arrival of the Christian emperor, Constantine, beginning:
- Then will arise a king of the Greeks whose name is Constans. He will be king of the Romans and the Greeks. He will be tall of stature, of handsome appearance with shining face, and well put together in all parts of his body...
Ippolito d'Este rebuilt the Villa d'Este at Tibur, the modern Tivoli, from 1550 onward, and commissioned elaborate fresco murals in the Villa that celebrate the Tiburtine Sibyl, as prophesying the birth of Christ to the classical world.
The later Sibyls
The Sibyls were also represented in publicly available art. Michelangelo fixed our image of the sibyls forever, in his powerful representations of them, seated, both aged and ageless, beyond mere femininity, in the frescos of the Sistine Chapel. The library of Pope Julius II in the Vatican has images of sibyls and they are in the pavement of the Siena Cathedral.Late Gothic Sibyls, each with her Emblem and a single line of prophecy, lettered on a fluttering banderole, were fixtures of Late Gothic illuminations, in 14th and 15th-century France and Germany.
Long after the oracles had been silenced by the Christians in the 4th century, the number of Sibyls was increased in the Middle Ages to as many as twelve, a magical number. See, for example, the Apennine Sibyl. Ten, for François Rabelais, was still the proverbial number: “How know we but that she may be an eleventh Sibyl or a second Cassandra?” (Gargantua and Pantagruel, iii. 16, noted in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1897.
The medieval, Christianized role for the Sibyls was as precursors, prophets of the New Dispensation, Christian allies in a Hellenistic world:
- Dies irae, dies illa Solvet saeclum in favilla
- Teste David cum Sibylla.
- ("Day of wrath, o day of mourning, when the world dissolves in the twinkling of an eye, as David foretold, and the Sibyl." See Dies Irae.)
Sibylline books
- Main articles: Sibylline Books and Sibylline oracles.
The Sibylline Books are not the same as the Sibylline Oracles. The Roman Sibylline Books were quite different in character from the preserved Sibylline Oracles, which typically predict disasters rather than prescribe solutions. Some genuine Sibylline verses are preserved in the Book of Marvels of Phlegon of Tralles (2nd century CE).
The oldest collection of written Sibylline Books appears to have been made about the time of Solon and Cyrus at Gergis on Mount Ida in the Troad. The sibyl, who was born near there, at Marpessus, and whose tomb was later marked by the temple of Apollo built upon the archaic site, appears on the coins of Gergis, ca 400-350 BCE. (cf. Phlegon, quoted in the 5th century geographical dictionary of Stephanus of Byzantium, under 'Gergis'). Other places claimed to have been her home. 'The sibylline collection at Gergis was attributed to the Hellespontine Sibyl and was preserved in the temple of Apollo at Gergis. Thence it passed to Erythrae, where it became famous. It was this very collection, it would appear, which found its way to Cumae and from Cumae to Rome. Gergis, a city of Dardania in Troas, a settlement of the ancient Teucri, and, consequently, a town of very great antiquity (Herodotus iv: 122). Gergis, according to Xenophon, was a place of much strength. It had a temple sacred to Apollo Gergithius, and was said to have given birth to the Sibyl, who is sometimes called Erythraea, from Erythrae, a small place on Mount Ida (Dionysius of Halicarnassus i. 55), and at others Gergithia ('of Gergis').
- Coin of Gergis bearing the sibyl Herophile on the Digital Historia Numorum