Sibyl - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The word Sibyl comes (via Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

) from the Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

word σίβυλλα sibylla, meaning prophet

Prophet

In religion, a prophet, from the Greek word προφήτης profitis meaning "foreteller", is an individual who is claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people...

ess. The earliest oracular seeresses known as the sibyls of antiquity, "who admittedly are known only through legend" prophesied at certain holy sites, under the divine influence of a deity, originally— at Delphi

Delphi

Delphi is both an archaeological site and a modern town in Greece on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus in the valley of Phocis.In Greek mythology, Delphi was the site of the Delphic oracle, the most important oracle in the classical Greek world, and a major site for the worship of the god...

and Pessinos— one of the chthonic

Chthonic

Chthonic designates, or pertains to, deities or spirits of the underworld, especially in relation to Greek religion. The Greek word khthon is one of several for "earth"; it typically refers to the interior of the soil, rather than the living surface of the land or the land as territory...

deities. Later in antiquity, sibyls wandered from place to place.

History

Homer

In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

seems to have been unaware of a Sibyl. The first known Greek writer to mention a sibyl is Heraclitus

Heraclitus

Heraclitus of Ephesus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom...

, in the 5th century BC:

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.'

Walter Burkert

Walter Burkert is a German scholar of Greek mythology and cult.An emeritus professor of classics at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, he also has taught in the United Kingdom and the United States...

observes that "Frenzied women from whose lips the god speaks" are recorded very much earlier in the Near East, as in Mari

Mari, Syria

Mari was an ancient Sumerian and Amorite city, located 11 kilometers north-west of the modern town of Abu Kamal on the western bank of Euphrates river, some 120 km southeast of Deir ez-Zor, Syria...

in the second millennium and in Assyria in the first millennium".

Until the literary elaborations of Roman writers, sibyls were not identified by a personal name, but by names that refer to the location of their temenos
Temenos
Temenos is a piece of land cut off and assigned as an official domain, especially to kings and chiefs, or a piece of land marked off from common uses and dedicated to a god, a sanctuary, holy grove or holy precinct: The Pythian race-course is called a temenos, the sacred valley of the Nile is the ...

, or shrine.

In Pausanias

Pausanias (geographer)

Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is famous for his Description of Greece , a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from firsthand observations, and is a crucial link between classical...

, Description of Greece, the first Sibyl at Delphi mentioned ("the former" [earlier]) was of great antiquity, and was thought, according to Pausanias, to have been given the name "sibyl" by the Libyans. Sir James Frazer

James Frazer

Sir James George Frazer , was a Scottish social anthropologist influential in the early stages of the modern studies of mythology and comparative religion...

calls the text defective. The second Sibyl referred to by Pausanias, and named "Herophile", seems to have been based ultimately in Samos

Samos Island

Samos is a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, south of Chios, north of Patmos and the Dodecanese, and off the coast of Asia Minor, from which it is separated by the -wide Mycale Strait. It is also a separate regional unit of the North Aegean region, and the only municipality of the regional...

, but visited other shrines, at Clarus

Clarus

Clarus in the territory of Colophon in the Ionian coast of Asia Minor was a much-revered, much-famed cult center described by Pausanias ....

. Delos

Delos

The island of Delos , isolated in the centre of the roughly circular ring of islands called the Cyclades, near Mykonos, is one of the most important mythological, historical and archaeological sites in Greece...

and Delphi

Delphi

and sang there, but that at the same time, Delphi had its own sibyl.

James Frazer

James Frazer

Sir James George Frazer , was a Scottish social anthropologist influential in the early stages of the modern studies of mythology and comparative religion...

writes, in his translation and commentary on Pausanias, that only two of the Greek Sibyls were historical: Herophile of Erythrae

Erythraean Sibyl

The Erythraean Sibyl was the prophetess of classical antiquity presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Erythrae, a town in Ionia opposite Chios, which was built by Neleus, the son of Codrus....

, who is thought to have lived in the 8th century BC, and Phyto of Samos

Samian Sibyl

thumb|right|Montfoort's rendering of the Samian Sibyl.thumb|right|Sibylla-Samia was the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle near Hera's temple on the Isle of Samos, a Greek colony. Published by Guillaume Rouillein in 1553....

who lived somewhat later. He observes that the Greeks at first seemed to have known only one Sibyl, and instances Heraclides Ponticus

Heraclides Ponticus

Heraclides Ponticus , also known as Herakleides and Heraklides of Pontus, was a Greek philosopher and astronomer who lived and died at Heraclea Pontica, now Karadeniz Ereğli, Turkey. He is best remembered for proposing that the earth rotates on its axis, from west to east, once every 24 hours...

as the first ancient writer to distinguish several Sibyls: Heraclitus names at least three Sibyls, the Phrygian

Phrygian Sibyl

In the extended complement of sibyls of the Gothic and Renaissance imagination, the Phrygian Sibyl was the priestess presiding over an Apollonian oracle at Phrygia, a historical kingdom in the west central part of the Anatolian highlands. The Phrygian sibyl appears to be one of a triplicated sibyl,...

, the Erythraean

Erythraean Sibyl

The Erythraean Sibyl was the prophetess of classical antiquity presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Erythrae, a town in Ionia opposite Chios, which was built by Neleus, the son of Codrus....

, and the Hellespontine

Hellespontine Sibyl

thumb|right|Montfoort's rendering of the Hellespontine SibylThe Hellespontine Sibyl was the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Dardania. The Sibyl is sometimes referred to as the Trojan Sibyl. The word Sibyl comes from the ancient Latin word sibylla, meaning prophetess or oracle...

. The scholar David S. Potter writes, "In the late fifth century BC it does appear that 'Sibylla' was the name given to a single inspired prophetess".

Number of Sibyls

Like Heraclitus, Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

speaks of only one Sibyl, but in course of time the number increased to nine, with a tenth, the Tiburtine Sibyl

Tiburtine Sibyl

The Tiburtine Sibyl was a Roman sibyl, whose seat was the ancient Etruscan town of Tibur .The mythic meeting of Cæsar 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...

, probably Etruscan

Etruscan mythology

The Etruscans were a diachronically continuous population, with a distinct language and culture during the period of earliest European writing, in the Mediterranean Iron Age in the second half of the first millennium BC...

in origin, added by the Romans. According to Lactantius

Lactantius

Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius was an early Christian author who became an advisor to the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine I, guiding his religious policy as it developed, and tutor to his son.-Biography:...

' Divine Institutions (i.6, 4th century AD, quoting from a lost work of Varro

Marcus Terentius Varro

Marcus Terentius Varro was an ancient Roman scholar and writer. He is sometimes called Varro Reatinus to distinguish him from his younger contemporary Varro Atacinus.-Biography:...

, 1st century BC) these ten sibyls were those in the following list. Of them, the three most famous sibyls throughout their long career were the Delphic, the Erythraean and the Cumaean. Not all the following Sibyls were securely identified with an oracular shrine, and in the vague and shifting Christian picture there is some overlap.

Persian Sibyl

The Persian Sibyl was said to be prophetic priestess presiding over the Apollo

Apollo

Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...

nian Oracle

Oracle

In Classical Antiquity, an oracle was a person or agency considered to be a source of wise counsel or prophetic predictions or precognition of the future, inspired by the gods. As such it is a form of divination....

; 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. The Persian Sibyl, by name Sambethe, was reported to be of the family of Noah

Noah

Noah was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the tenth and last of the antediluvian Patriarchs. The biblical story of Noah is contained in chapters 6–9 of the book of Genesis, where he saves his family and representatives of all animals from the flood by constructing an ark...

. The 2nd-century AD traveller Pausanias

Pausanias (geographer)

, pausing at Delphi

Delphi

to enumerate four sibyls, mentions the "Palestinian Sibyl" Sabbe:

Later than Demo there grew up among the Hebrews above Palestine a woman who gave oracles and was named Sabbe. They say that the father of Sabbe was Berosus
Berosus
Berosus may refer to:*In Greek mythology:**Berosus, father of Tanais by Lysippe **Berosus, father of the Sibyl Sabbe by Erymanthe*Berossus , Hellenistic-era Babylonian writer and astronomer...

, and her mother Erymanthe. But some call her a Babylonian Sibyl, others an Egyptian.

The medieval Byzantine encyclopedia, the Suda

Suda

The Suda or Souda is a massive 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas. It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often...

, credits the Hebrew Sibyl as author of the Sibylline oracles

Sibylline oracles

The Sibylline Oracles are a collection of oracular utterances written in Greek hexameters ascribed to the Sibyls, prophetesses who uttered divine revelations in a frenzied state. Fourteen books and eight fragments of Sibylline Oracles survive...

Libyan Sibyl

The so-called Libyan Sibyl was identified with prophetic priestess presiding over the ancient Zeus

Zeus

In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...

Amon

Amun

Amun, reconstructed Egyptian Yamānu , was a god in Egyptian mythology who in the form of Amun-Ra became the focus of the most complex system of theology in Ancient Egypt...

(Zeus represented with the horns of Amon) oracle

Oracle

at the Siwa Oasis

Siwa Oasis

The Siwa Oasis is an oasis in Egypt, located between the Qattara Depression and the Egyptian Sand Sea in the Libyan Desert, nearly 50 km east of the Libyan border, and 560 km from Cairo....

in the Western Desert of Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

(incorrectly placed in the map). The oracle here was consulted by Alexander after his conquest of Egypt. The mother of the Libyan Sibyl was Lamia
Lamia (mythology)
In ancient Greek mythology, Lamia was a beautiful queen of Libya who became a child-eating daemon. Aristophanes claimed her name derived from the Greek word for gullet , referring to her habit of devouring children....

, meaning "devourer". Euripides

Euripides

Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...

mentions the Libyan Sibyl in the prologue to his tragedy Lamia.

Delphic Sibyl

The Delphic Sibyl was a legendary figure who gave prophecies in the sacred precinct of Apollo

Apollo

Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...

at Delphi

Delphi

, located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus

Mount Parnassus

Mount Parnassus, also Parnassos , is a mountain of limestone in central Greece that towers above Delphi, north of the Gulf of Corinth, and offers scenic views of the surrounding olive groves and countryside. According to Greek mythology, this mountain was sacred to Apollo and the Corycian nymphs,...

. Pausanias claimed that the Sibyl was "born between man and goddess, daughter of sea monsters and an immortal nymph

Nymph

A nymph in Greek mythology is a female minor nature deity typically associated with a particular location or landform. Different from gods, nymphs are generally regarded as divine spirits who animate nature, and are usually depicted as beautiful, young nubile maidens who love to dance and sing;...

". Others said she was sister or daughter to Apollo

Apollo

Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...

. Still others claimed the Sibyl received her powers from Gaia originally, who passed the oracle to Themis

Themis

Themis is an ancient Greek Titaness. She is described as "of good counsel", and is the embodiment of divine order, law, and custom. Themis means "divine law" rather than human ordinance, literally "that which is put in place", from the verb τίθημι, títhēmi, "to put"...

, who passed it to Phoebe

Phoebe (mythology)

In Greek mythology "radiant" Phoebe , was one of the original Titans, who were one set of sons and daughters of Uranus and Gaia. She was traditionally associated with the moon , as in Michael Drayton's Endimion and Phœbe, , the first extended treatment of the Endymion myth in English...

. The Delphic Sibyl has sometimes been confused with the Pythia

Pythia

The Pythia , commonly known as the Oracle of Delphi, was the priestess at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. The Pythia was widely credited for her prophecies inspired by Apollo. The Delphic oracle was established in the 8th century BC...

, the priestess of Apollo who gave prophecies at the Delphic Oracle. The two are not identical, and should be treated as separate figures.

Cimmerian Sibyl

Naevius

Gnaeus Naevius

Gnaeus Naevius was a Roman epic poet and dramatist of the Old Latin period. He had a notable literary career at Rome until his satiric comments delivered in comedy angered the Metelli family, one of whom was consul. After a sojourn in prison he recanted and was set free by the tribunes...

names the Cimmerian Sibyl in his books of the Punic War and Piso

Piso

The Piso family of ancient Rome was a prominent plebeian branch of the gens Calpurnia, descended from Calpus the son of Numa Pompilius. with at least 50 prominent Roman family members recognized...

in his annals.

The Sibyl's son Evander

Evander

In Roman mythology, Evander , also spelled Euander, was a deific culture hero from Arcadia, Greece, who brought the Greek pantheon, laws and alphabet to Italy, where he founded the city of Pallantium on the future site of Rome, sixty years...

founded in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

the shrine of Pan

Pan (mythology)

Pan , in Greek religion and mythology, is the god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, nature, of mountain wilds, hunting and rustic music, as well as the companion of the nymphs. His name originates within the Greek language, from the word paein , meaning "to pasture." He has the hindquarters, legs,...

which is called the Lupercal

Lupercal

The Lupercal is a cave at the foot of the Palatine Hill in Rome, between the Temple of Apollo Palatinus and the Basilica of Santa Anastasia. In the legend of Rome's foundation, Romulus and Remus were found there by the lactating female wolf who suckled them until they were found by Faustulus...

Erythraean Sibyl

The Erythraean Sibyl was sited at Erythrae

Erythrae

Erythrae or Erythrai later Litri, was one of the twelve Ionian cities of Asia Minor, situated 22 km north-east of the port of Cyssus , on a small peninsula stretching into the Bay of Erythrae, at an equal distance from the mountains Mimas and Corycus, and directly opposite the island of Chios...

, a town in Ionia

Ionia

Ionia is an ancient region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey, the region nearest İzmir, which was historically Smyrna. It consisted of the northernmost territories of the Ionian League of Greek settlements...

opposite Chios

Chios

Chios is the fifth largest of the Greek islands, situated in the Aegean Sea, seven kilometres off the Asia Minor coast. The island is separated from Turkey by the Chios Strait. The island is noted for its strong merchant shipping community, its unique mastic gum and its medieval villages...

.

Apollodorus of Erythrae affirms the Erythraean Sibyl to have been his own countrywoman and to have predicted the Trojan War

Trojan War

In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad...

and prophesised to the Greeks who were moving against Ilium

Troy

Troy was a city, both factual and legendary, located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, southeast of the Dardanelles and beside Mount Ida...

both that Troy would be destroyed and that Homer

Homer

would write falsehoods.

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.

Samian Sibyl

The Samian sibyl's oracular site was at Samos

Samos Island

Cumaean Sibyl

The sibyl who most concerned the Romans was the Cumaean Sibyl

Cumaean Sibyl

The ageless Cumaean Sibyl was the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Cumae, a Greek colony located near Naples, Italy.The word sibyl comes from the ancient Greek word sibylla, meaning prophetess. There were many Sibyls in different locations throughout the ancient world...

, located near the Greek city of Naples

Naples

Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...

, whom Virgil's Aeneas consults before his descent to the lower world (Aeneid
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...

book VI: 10). Burkert notes (1985, p 117) that the conquest of Cumae by the Oscans in the 5th century destroyed the tradition, but provides a terminus ante quem for a Cumaean sibyl. It was she who supposedly sold to Tarquinius Superbus, the last king of Rome, the original Sibylline books

Sibylline Books

The Sibylline Books or Libri Sibyllini were a collection of oracular utterances, set out in Greek hexameters, purchased from a sibyl by the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus, and consulted at momentous crises through the history of the Republic and the Empire...

(q.v.). Christians were especially impressed with the Cumaean Sibyl, for in Virgil's Fourth Eclogue she foretells the coming of a savior - possibly a flattering reference to the poet's patron - whom Christians identified as Jesus.

Hellespontine Sibyl

The Hellespontine, or Trojan Sibyl presided over the Apollo

Apollo

Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...

nian oracle

Oracle

at Dardania

Dardania (Asia minor)

Dardania in Greek mythology is the name of a city founded on Mount Ida by Dardanus from which also the region and the people took their name. It lay on the Hellespont, and is the source of the strait's modern name, the Dardanelles....

.

The Hellespontian Sibyl was born in the village of Marpessus near the small town of Gergitha, during the lifetimes of Solon

Solon

Solon was an Athenian statesman, lawmaker, and poet. He is remembered particularly for his efforts to legislate against political, economic and moral decline in archaic Athens...

and Cyrus the Great

Cyrus the Great

Cyrus II of Persia , commonly known as Cyrus the Great, also known as Cyrus the Elder, was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire. Under his rule, the empire embraced all the previous civilized states of the ancient Near East, expanded vastly and eventually conquered most of Southwest Asia and much...

. Marpessus, according to Heraclides of Pontus, was formerly within the boundaries of the Troad. The sibylline collection

Sibylline Books

at Gergis was attributed to the Hellespontine Sibyl and was preserved in the temple of Apollo at Gergis. Thence it passed to Erythrae

Erythrae

, where it became famous.

Phrygian Sibyl

The Phrygian Sibyl appears to be a doublet of the Hellespontine Sibyl.

Tiburtine Sibyl

To the classical sibyls of the Greeks, the Romans added a tenth, the Tiburtine Sibyl, whose seat was the ancient Etruscan

Etruscan civilization

Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to a civilization of ancient Italy in the area corresponding roughly to Tuscany. The ancient Romans called its creators the Tusci or Etrusci...

town of Tibur (modern Tivoli

Tivoli, Italy

Tivoli , the classical Tibur, is an ancient Italian town in Lazio, about 30 km east-north-east of Rome, at the falls of the Aniene river where it issues from the Sabine hills...

). The mythic meeting of Augustus

Augustus

Augustus ;23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian...

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

Etruscan Sibyl

The Etruscan Sibyl was the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle. The word Sibyl comes from the ancient Greek word sibylla, meaning prophetess. There were many Sibyls in the ancient world, but the Etruscan Sibyl predicted the Trojan War.Whether the sibyl in question was the Tiburtine...

of Tibur or the Greek Sibyl

Cumaean Sibyl

of Cumae

Cumae

Cumae is an ancient Greek settlement lying to the northwest of Naples in the Italian region of Campania. Cumae was the first Greek colony on the mainland of Italy , and the seat of the Cumaean Sibyl...

is not always clear. The Christian author Lactantius

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
Oracle
In Classical Antiquity, an oracle was a person or agency considered to be a source of wise counsel or prophetic predictions or precognition of the future, inspired by the gods. As such it is a form of divination....

responses the Senate transferred into the capitol. (Divine Institutes I.vi)

An apocalyptic pseudo-prophecy exists, attributed to the Tiburtine Sibyl, written c. 380 CE, but with revisions and interpolations added at later dates. It purports to prophesy the advent of a final Emperor named Constans, vanquishing the foes of Christianity, bringing about a period of great wealth and peace, ending paganism and converting the Jews. After vanquishing Gog and Magog

Gog and Magog

Gog and Magog are names that appear primarily in various Jewish, Christian and Muslim scriptures, as well as numerous subsequent references in other works. Their context can be either genealogical or eschatological and apocalyptic, as in Ezekiel and Revelation...

, the Emperor is said to resign his crown to God. This would give way to the Antichrist

Antichrist

The term or title antichrist, in Christian theology, refers to a leader who fulfills Biblical prophecies concerning an adversary of Christ, while resembling him in a deceptive manner...

. Ippolito d'Este rebuilt the Villa d'Este

Villa d'Este

The Villa d'Este is a villa situated at Tivoli, near Rome, Italy. Listed as a UNESCO world heritage site, it is a fine example of Renaissance architecture and the Italian Renaissance garden.-History:...

at Tibur, the modern Tivoli

Tivoli, Italy

Tivoli , the classical Tibur, is an ancient Italian town in Lazio, about 30 km east-north-east of Rome, at the falls of the Aniene river where it issues from the Sabine hills...

, 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.

Later Sibyls

The medieval, Christianized role for these augmented Sibyls was as precursors, prophets of the New Dispensation, Christian allies in a Hellenistic world:

Dies irae
Dies Irae
Dies Irae is a thirteenth century Latin hymn thought to be written by Thomas of Celano . It is a medieval Latin poem characterized by its accentual stress and its rhymed lines. The metre is trochaic...

, dies illa

Solvet saeclum in favilla

Teste David cum Sibylla.

("Day of wrath, that day / will loose the age in ash / by the witness David with the Sibyl.")

In the Middle Ages the number of Sibyls was canonized as twelve, a symbolic number

Numerology

Numerology is any study of the purported mystical relationship between a count or measurement and life. It has many systems and traditions and beliefs...

. See, for example, the Apennine Sibyl, though sometimes, e.g. for François Rabelais

François Rabelais

François Rabelais was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He has historically been regarded as a writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes and songs...

, ten was still the proverbial number: “How know we but that she may be an eleventh Sibyl or a second Cassandra?” Gargantua and Pantagruel
Gargantua and Pantagruel
The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel is a connected series of five novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais. It is the story of two giants, a father and his son and their adventures, written in an amusing, extravagant, satirical vein...

, iii. 16, noted in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1897. 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.

From the early Renaissance, the Sibyls were also represented in publicly available art. Michelangelo

Michelangelo

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...

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

Sistine Chapel

Sistine Chapel is the best-known chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the Pope in Vatican City. It is famous for its architecture and its decoration that was frescoed throughout by Renaissance artists including Michelangelo, Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Pinturicchio...

. Five sibyls were painted on the Sistine Chapel ceiling

Sistine Chapel ceiling

The Sistine Chapel ceiling, painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512, at the commission of Pope Julius II, is a cornerstone work of High Renaissance art. The ceiling is that of the large Papal Chapel built within the Vatican between 1477 and 1480 by Pope Sixtus IV after whom it is named...

by Michelangelo

Michelangelo

; the Delphic Sibyl, Libyan Sibyl, Persian Sibyl, Cumaean Sibyl and the Erythraean Sibyl. The library of Pope Julius II

Pope Julius II

Pope Julius II , nicknamed "The Fearsome Pope" and "The Warrior Pope" , born Giuliano della Rovere, was Pope from 1503 to 1513...

in the Vatican has images of sibyls and they are in the pavement of the Siena

Duomo di Siena

The Cathedral of Siena , dedicated from its earliest days as a Roman Catholic Marian church and now to Santa Maria Assunta , is a medieval church in Siena, central Italy....

Cathedral. The Basilica of Santa Maria in Aracoeli

Santa Maria in Aracoeli

The Basilica of St. Mary of the Altar of Heaven is a titular basilica in Rome, located on the highest summit of the Campidoglio. It is still the designated Church of the city council of Rome, which uses the ancient title of Senatus Populusque Romanus...

crowning the Campidoglio, Rome, is particularly associated with the Sibyl, because a medieval tradition referred the origin of its name to an otherwise unattested altar, ARA PRIMOGENITI DEI said to have been raised to the "firstborn of God" by the emperor Augustus, who had been warned of his advent by the sibylline books: in the church the figures of Augustus and of the Tiburtine sibyl are painted on either side of the arch above the high altar. In the 19th century Rodolfo Lanciani

Rodolfo Lanciani

Rodolfo Amedeo Lanciani was an Italian archaeologist, a pioneering student of ancient Roman topography, and among his many excavations was that of the House of the Vestals in the Roman Forum....

recalled that at Christmas time the presepio included a carved and painted figure of the sibyl pointing out to Augustus the Virgin and Child, who appeared in the sky in a halo of light. "The two figures, carved in wood, have now [1896] disappeared; they were given away or sold thirty years ago, when a new set of images was offered to the Presepio by prince Alexander Torlonia." (Lanciani, 1896 ch 1) Like prophets, Renaissance sibyls forecasting the advent of Christ appear in monuments: modelled by Giacomo della Porta

Giacomo della Porta

Giacomo della Porta was an Italian architect and sculptor, who worked on many important buildings in Rome, including St. Peter's Basilica. He was born at Porlezza, Lombardy and died in Rome.-Biography:...

in the Santa Casa at Loreto

Loreto (AN)

Loreto is a hilltown and comune of the Italian province of Ancona, in the Marche. It is mostly famous as the seat of the Basilica della Santa Casa, a popular Catholic pilgrimage site.-Location:...

, painted by Raphael in Santa Maria della Pace

Santa Maria della Pace

Santa Maria della Pace is a church in Rome, central Italy, not far from Piazza Navona.The current building was built on the foundations of the pre-existing church of Sant'Andrea de Aquarizariis in 1482, commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV. The church was rededicated to the Virgin Mary to remember a...

, by Pinturicchio in the Borgia apartments of the Vatican, engraved by Baccio Baldini, a contemporary of Botticelli, and graffites by Matteo di Giovanni in the pavement of the Duomo of Siena.

The 19th century French historian Jules Michelet

Jules Michelet

Jules Michelet was a French historian. He was born in Paris to a family with Huguenot traditions.-Early life:His father was a master printer, not very prosperous, and Jules assisted him in the actual work of the press...

attributed the origins of European witchcraft

European witchcraft

European Witchcraft is witchcraft and magic that is practised primarily in the locality of Europe.-Antiquity:Instances of persecution of witchcraft are documented from Classical Antiquity, paralleling evidence from the Ancient Near East and the Old Testament.In Ancient Greece, for example, Theoris,...

to the religion of the sibyls. In his introduction to La Sorcière (1862), Michelet wrote:

A powerful, tenacious religion, as Greek paganism was, begins with the sibyl, ends with the witch. The former, a beautiful virgin, in the full light of day, rocked its cradle, gave it its charm and glory. Later, fallen, ill, in the darkness of the Middle Ages, on heaths and in forests, it was hidden by the witch...

Sibylline books

Main articles: Sibylline Books
Sibylline Books
The Sibylline Books or Libri Sibyllini were a collection of oracular utterances, set out in Greek hexameters, purchased from a sibyl by the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus, and consulted at momentous crises through the history of the Republic and the Empire...

and Sibylline Oracles
Sibylline oracles
The Sibylline Oracles are a collection of oracular utterances written in Greek hexameters ascribed to the Sibyls, prophetesses who uttered divine revelations in a frenzied state. Fourteen books and eight fragments of Sibylline Oracles survive...

.

The sayings of sibyls and oracle

Oracle

s were notoriously open to interpretation (compare Nostradamus

Nostradamus

Michel de Nostredame , usually Latinised to Nostradamus, was a French apothecary and reputed seer who published collections of prophecies that have since become famous worldwide. He is best known for his book Les Propheties , the first edition of which appeared in 1555...

) and were constantly used for both civil and cult propaganda. 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

Phlegon of Tralles

Phlegon of Tralles was a Greek writer and freedman of the emperor Hadrian, who lived in the 2nd century AD.His chief work was the Olympiads, an historical compendium in sixteen books, from the 1st down to the 229th Olympiad , of which several chapters are preserved in Eusebius' Chronicle, Photius...

(2nd century CE).

The oldest collection of written Sibylline Books appears to have been made about the time of Solon

Solon

Solon was an Athenian statesman, lawmaker, and poet. He is remembered particularly for his efforts to legislate against political, economic and moral decline in archaic Athens...

and Cyrus at Gergis on Mount Ida

Mount Ida

In Greek mythology, two sacred mountains are called Mount Ida, the "Mountain of the Goddess": Mount Ida in Crete; and Mount Ida in the ancient Troad region of western Anatolia which was also known as the Phrygian Ida in classical antiquity and is the mountain that is mentioned in the Iliad of...

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

Stephanus of Byzantium

Stephen of Byzantium, also known as Stephanus Byzantinus , was the author of an important geographical dictionary entitled Ethnica...

, under 'Gergis'). Other places claimed to have been her home. The sibylline collection at Gergis was attributed to the Hellespontine Sibyl

Hellespontine Sibyl

and was preserved in the temple of Apollo at Gergis. Thence it passed to Erythrae

Erythrae

, where it became famous. It was this very collection, it would appear, which found its way to Cumae

Cumae

and from Cumae to Rome. Gergis, a city of Dardania

Dardania (Asia minor)

in the Troad, a settlement of the ancient Teucri

Teucer

In Greek mythology Teucer, also Teucrus or Teucris , was the son of King Telamon of Salamis Island and his second wife Hesione, daughter of King Laomedon of Troy. He fought alongside his half-brother, Ajax, in the Trojan War and is the legendary founder of the city Salamis on Cyprus...

, and, consequently, a town of very great antiquity (Herodotus iv: 122). Gergis, according to Xenophon

Xenophon

Xenophon , son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens, was a Greek historian, soldier, mercenary, philosopher and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates...

, 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

Erythraean Sibyl

The Erythraean Sibyl was the prophetess of classical antiquity presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Erythrae, a town in Ionia opposite Chios, which was built by Neleus, the son of Codrus....

, from Erythrae, a small place on Mount Ida

Mount Ida

(Dionysius of Halicarnassus

Dionysius of Halicarnassus

Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus. His literary style was Attistic — imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime.-Life:...

i. 55), and at others Gergithia ('of Gergis').

Sources

Beyer, Jürgen, 'Sibyllen', "Enzyklopädie des Märchens. Handwörterbuch zur historischen und vergleichenden Erzählforschung", vol. 12 (Berlin & New York, Walter de Gruyter 2007), coll. 625-30
Bouché-Leclercq, Auguste
Auguste Bouché-Leclercq
- Life :Auguste Bouché-Leclercq was born in 1842 at Francières, Oise as son of Louis-Thomas Bouché and Marie-Joséphine Leclercq. His parents were farmers. He was educated at seminaries and took his school-leaving exam in 1861 in Paris. Later he travelled as private tutor several months through...

, Histoire de la divination dans l'Antiquité, I-IV volumes, Paris, 1879-1882.
Broad, William J., The Oracle: the Lost Secrets and Hidden Message of Ancient Delphi (Penguin Press, 2006).
Burkert, Walter
Walter Burkert
Walter Burkert is a German scholar of Greek mythology and cult.An emeritus professor of classics at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, he also has taught in the United Kingdom and the United States...

, Greek Religion (Harvard University Press, 1985) esp. pp 116–18.
Delcourt, M. L'oracle de Delphes, 1955.
Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911.
Fox, Robin Lane, Alexander the Great 1973. Chapter 14 gives the best modern account of Alexander's visit to the oasis at Siwah, with some background material on the Greek conception of Sibyls.
Goodrich, Norma Lorre, Priestesses, 1990.
Hale, John R. and others (2003). Questioning the Delphic Oracle. Retrieved Jan. 7, 2005.
Hindrew, Vivian, The Sibyls: The First Prophetess of Mami (Wata) MWHS, 2007)
Jeanmaire, H. La Sibylle et la retour de l'âge d'or, 1939.
Lanciani, Rofolfo, Pagan and Christian Rome, 1896, ch. 1 on-line
Lactantius, Divine Institutions Book I, ch. vi (e-text, in English)
Maass, E., De Sibyllarum Indicibus, Berlin, 1879.
Parke, Herbert William, History of the Delphic Oracle, 1939.
Parke, Herbert William, Sibyls and Sibylline Prophecy, 1988.
Pausanias, Description of Greece, ed. and translated by Sir James Frazer
James Frazer
Sir James George Frazer , was a Scottish social anthropologist influential in the early stages of the modern studies of mythology and comparative religion...

, 1913 edition. Cf. v.5
Peck, Harry Thurston, Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquity, 1898. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3atext%3a1999%2e04%2e0062&query=id%3dsibyllae#id,sibyllae
Pitt-Kethley, Fiona, Journeys to the Underworld, 1988
Potter, David Stone, http://www.umich.edu/~classics/directories/faculty.html#Potter, Prophecy and history in the crisis of the Roman Empire: a historical commentary on the Thirteenth Sibylline Oracle, 1990. Cf. Chapter 3. review of book
Potter, David Stone, Prophets and Emperors. Human and Divine Authority from Augustus to Theodosius, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994. review of book
Smith, William
William Smith (lexicographer)
Sir William Smith Kt. was a noted English lexicographer.-Early life:Born at Enfield in 1813 of Nonconformist parents, he was originally destined for a theological career, but instead was articled to a solicitor. In his spare time he taught himself classics, and when he entered University College...

, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology
Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology
The Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology is an encyclopedia/biographical dictionary.- Characteristic :...

, 1870, article on Sibylla, http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-bio/3147.html
West, Martin Litchfield
Martin Litchfield West
Martin Litchfield West is an internationally recognised scholar in classics, classical antiquity and philology...

, The Orphic Poems, Oxford, 1983.

Classic sibyls

Music

Medieval Christianizing sibyls

Late Gothic illustrations of twelve sibyls

Modern sibyl imagery

A sardonic sequence of 'Twelve Sibyls', accompanied by the artist Leonard Baskin's woodcuts, revisits Sibyls and Others (1980). Ruth Fainlight
Ruth Fainlight
Ruth Fainlight , is a poet, short story writer, translator and librettist.-Life and career:Fainlight was born in New York, but has mainly lived in England since she was fifteen, having also spent some years living in France and Spain. She studied for two years at the Birmingham and Brighton...

has written dozens of poems about these ambiguous figures, bridging religion, classical and Biblical settings, femininity and modernity. One of them concludes: 'I am no more conscious of the prophecies / than I can understand the language of birds /…let the simple folk praise you, / keep you safe as a caged bird, / and call you a sibyl'.
Pjetër Bogdani, "The Songs of the Ten Sibyls" modern poetry, translated from Albanian
T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land is prefaced by a quote from Petronius' Satyricon (1st century AD) The passage translates roughly as "I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a jar, and when the boys said to her 'Sibyl, what do you want?' that one replied 'I want to die'.
The SIBYLS beamline at the Advanced Light Source in Berkeley, CA.

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