SIBILLA I

### SIBYL

**I. The Sibyls in Non-Christian Religions.** — In Greece this figure (of which no trace is found in Olympian religion) developed under the influence of the cult of Dionysus, characterized precisely by demonic possession—the same possession from which the Pythia at Delphi arose. The Sibyl and the Pythia differ in that while the Pythia has a more determined and controlled manifestation in manner and effect, the Sibyl enjoys greater freedom of personal inspiration, not necessarily bound either to a sanctuary or to a priesthood.

In general, the Sibyl prophesies misfortunes: this pessimistic character is well summarized in a fragment of Heraclitus (σὰς, ed. Diels): “The Sibyl, with mouth possessed (i.e., by the deity), utters sad things (pessimism) without adornment or perfumes, and with her voice traverses thousands of years (decrepitude) by the deity’s power.”

Though unique in conception, the Sibyl has had various local specifications, almost always associated with a sacred spring or cave; Varro (in Lactantius, *Div. Inst.*, I, 6) fixes their number at ten and arranges them in the following chronological order: Persian, Libyan, Delphic, Cimmerian, Erythraean, Samian, Cumaean, Hellespontine, Phrygian, and Tiburtine. Of these and others mentioned by authors, three are the principal ones: the Erythraean, named Herophile, pertaining to Ionia; the Cumaean, which is the Erythraean transferred to Italy; and the Babylonian (named Sabbe or Sambethe), unknown to Varro and coming into vogue during the Hellenistic period as a reaction of the East to Roman domination.

**II. The Sibylline Books in Rome.** — They are almost certainly of Etruscan origin and, according to Varro (in Lactantius, *Div. Inst.*, I, 6), were introduced to Rome from Cumae—a place famous for the cult of Apollo and the presence of the Sibyl—by an Etruscan king, Tarquin the Elder; according to Pliny (*Nat. hist.*, XIII, 88), by Tarquin the Proud. Tradition holds that an old woman offered nine of these books to the king, burning two at a time after each refusal to purchase. The king acquired the last three and had them placed in the Capitoline temple, where a special commission of duumvirs, later decemvirs, and then quindecimvirs *sacris faciundis* consulted them (to “approach the books,” *libros adire*, or “examine the books,” *libros inspicere*) at the Senate’s invitation. They were also called the *fatal books*, a clear allusion to their content (Lactantius, *Divinae Institutiones*, I, 6, 13).

In keeping with the rigidly legalistic spirit of Roman religion, which abhorred enthusiastic manifestations of religious feeling, the Sibyl in Rome was reduced, in the hands of the Quindecimvirs, to a written voice, interpreted—at the authority’s behest—by a technically trained priesthood in cases where the aim was rather to calm than to intensify religious excitement, *ad deponendos potius quam ad suscipiendas religiones*; that is, especially in times of public calamities, natural or social, so as to suggest how to placate the gods and thus restore the *pax deorum*. Indeed, the Sibylline Books were consulted nine times in cases of falling stones (meteorites), in addition to sporadic instances of earthquakes and famines. The remedies they prescribed were always of the same kind: supplications, lustrations, *lectisternia*, expiatory sacrifices, and the building of temples.

Destroyed in the fire of 83 B.C., the Senate decreed their reconstitution and sent an embassy to places renowned as Sibyls’ abodes (Tacitus, *Ann.*, VI, 12). This returned with about a thousand verses, which in 76 B.C. were deposited in the rebuilt Capitoline temple. Since political forgeries had infiltrated them, Augustus had them subjected to a rigorous revision and placed in the new temple he dedicated to Apollo on the Palatine (Suetonius, *Aug.*, 31).

It was the Cumaean Sibyl who, in accordance with the new Neopythagorean ideas, announced the birth of a new era, which seemed to open at the end of the civil wars (*Ultima Cumae magnum venit iam carminis aetas*: Virgil, *Ecl.*, IV, 4), coinciding with Augustus’ triumph; it was the Sibylline Books that prescribed in 17 B.C. the celebration of the Secular Games (Horace, *Carm. saec.*, 5), which, in Augustus’ thought, were to signify the closing of a troubled epoch and the beginning of a new era.

The Sibylline verses had the characteristic of being acrostic, both for mnemonic reasons and as a guarantee of inviolability (Cicero, *De div.*, II, 11). Their tenor was deliberately obscure and generic, so as to be adaptable to the most varied circumstances. They were consulted throughout the Republic and Empire until Julian the Apostate (Ammianus Marcellinus, XXIII, 17). Around 400, Stilicho ordered them to be burned (Rutilius Namatianus, II, 52).

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**III. SIBYLLINE ORACLES.** — Greek historians refer to predictions attributed to the Sibyls. Soon their collections began to circulate, entitled *Χρησμοὶ Σύμβλαχοι*; only scanty fragments survive (C. Alexandre [V. op. cit. in bibl.], II, pp. 118-47).

The well-defined collection transmitted under the name of Sibylline Oracles has nothing to do with pagan religion. It consists of 14 books of very diverse epochs and origins, which exploit the name of the Sibyls for propagandistic purposes. In the literary assimilation attempted especially by the Jews of Egypt, recourse was often had to the expedient of presenting entire works or isolated sayings under the patronage of some celebrated Greek historian or poet. By this literary device, a supposed dependence of Greek civilization on the Hebrew was ostentatiously claimed. The mystery surrounding the authoritative utterances of the Sibyls facilitated this literary forgery, sometimes quite sophisticated, sometimes rather puerile, which began in the 2nd century B.C. and continued into the Middle Ages.

Fourteen Sibylline books are known, including the oldest texts (2nd century B.C. to 4th century A.D.), though their origins cannot always be described. Books II, IX-X are lost, even if they were ever composed. The first two clearly result from an unhappy duplication of a single primitive work. Only a few verses survive of Books IV, VI, VII, XIII (respectively: 192, 28, 164, 173), while some fragments (Geffcken reports 8, with about a hundred verses in all) remain whose book of origin is unknown. This shows how their manuscript transmission presents manifold problems, compounded by the difficulty of establishing the various strata in passages evidently interpolated.

Book III is the oldest part of the collection, according to many initiated already in the time of the Maccabees (mid-2nd century B.C.). The book comprises 829 hexameters. It was composed in Greek, as even a superficial examination of the language demonstrates. In the poetic fiction it is supposed that the S., anterior to Homer, narrates future history in a veiled manner, with many repetitions and anachronisms. Famous is the description of the tower of Baebele. The Jewish glories are exalted; in prophetic style the idolatrous nations are cursed and monotheism is upheld. Rare and debatable are the messianic and eschatological elements (vv. 652-68). According to some authors Virgil in his Eclogue IV would have drawn inspiration from this book, especially from vv. 785-95, where with images similar to those of Is. 11:6-9 he describes the messianic peace. The work seems free from Christian interpolations, to which sometimes vv. 767-84 are assigned.

Books VI and VII are undoubtedly of Christian origin, the first being a brief hymn to Christ. In Book VIII (500 vv.), after the spurious prophecy about the Roman emperors from Julius Caesar to Hadrian, there is the well-known acrostic ‘Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς θεοῦ υἱὸς σωτὴρ σταυρός’ (vv. 217-50), which St Augustine discusses at length (De civitate Dei, XVIII, 23), giving its Latin translation and attributing it to the Erythraean or Cumaean Sibyl. The emperor Constantine (Oratio ad sanctum coelum, 18-19: PG 20, 1285-92) not only cites the acrostic but defends its authenticity as attributed to the Erythraean Sibyl, affirming that it had already been translated into Latin by Cicero. This assertion probably arises from a misunderstanding of a text in De divinatione (II, 54). Christian also is Book XIII (v. 173), which speaks of the Roman emperors down to Gallienus. Books XI (vv. 324), XII (vv. 209) and XIV (vv. 361), of sacred historical interest, are the work of Jews, but with notable Christian reworkings and interpolations. They, which are certainly not earlier than the 2nd-3rd century A.D., show how in that period there was a revival of the Jewish Sibyl with the anti-Christian polemical purpose. In a later age isolated poems still arose, attributed in particular to the Tiburtine Sibyl.

The influence of the Sibylline Oracles was more literary and artistic than ideological. Ancient ecclesiastical writers, in particular Clement of Alexandria, Theophilus of Antioch and Lactantius, who devotes an entire chapter to them De divinis testimoniis et de Sibyllis et earum carminibus (Divinae institutiones, I, 6), often resorted to Sibylline texts to prove the messianic expectation among pagans. An allusion to their eschatological passages is still found in the well-known verse Dies irae, Teste David cum Sibylla (cf. Orac. sibill., IV, 172-79).