Cumaean Sibyl
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Michelangelo's rendering of the Cumaean Sibyl |
The
Cumaean Sibyl was the priestess presiding over the
Apollonian oracle at
Cumae, a
Greek colony located near
Naples,
Italy.
The word
Sibyl comes (via
Latin) from the
ancient Greek word
sibylla, meaning
prophetess. There were many Sibyls in the ancient world, but because of the importance of the Cumaean Sibyl in the legends of
early Rome, she became one of the most noted and famous, often simply referred to as
The Sibyl.
In the art of
Michelangelo (shown to the right) and other painters, her powerful presence overshadows every other Sibyl, even her younger and more beautiful sisters, such as the
Delphic Sibyl.
There are various names for the Cumaean Sibyl: Amaltheia, Demophile, Deiphobe, Herophile, or Taraxandra. (In
Virgil's
Aeneid, she is called Deiphobe, daughter of
Glaucus.)
The Sibyl was said to inhabit a cave with one hundred mouths, each of which had a voice [
1] accessible by a still existing
dromos. The cave is a
trapezoidal dromos or passage over 131 m long, running parallel to the side of the hill and cut out of the volcanic stone. The Cave of the Sibyl was rediscovered in May
1932 by
Amedeo Maiuri.
The story of the acquisition of the
Sibylline Books by
Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the semi-legendary last king of the
Roman Kingdom, is one of the famous mythic elements of Roman history. Centuries ago, concurrent with the 50th
Olympiad and the Founding of the City of
Rome, an old woman arrived
incognita in Rome. She came to see King Tarquin. The Cumaean Sibyl offered nine books of prophecies to King Tarquin; and as the king declined to purchase them, owing to the exorbitant price she demanded, she burned three and offered the remaining six to Tarquin at the same stiff price, which he again refused, whereupon she burned three more and repeated her offer. Tarquin then relented and purchased the last three at the full original price (
Dion. Halic. 4.62), (another version has the price doubling each time.) The books were thereafter kept in the
Temple of Jupiter on the
Capitoline Hill, Rome, to be consulted only on emergencies. The Sibylline Books were finally completely destroyed in
83 CE when the temple of
Jove Capitolinus burned.
In the
Middle Ages, both the Cumaean Sibyl and Virgil were considered prophets of the birth of
Christ, because the fourth of Virgil's
Eclogues appears to contain a
Messianic prophecy by the Sibyl, and this was seized on by early
Christians as such—one reason why
Dante Alighieri later chose Virgil as his guide through the underworld in
The Divine Comedy. Similarly, Michelangelo prominently featured the Cumaean Sibyl in the
Sistine Chapel among the
Old Testament prophets.
Constantine, the Christian emperor, in his first address to the assembly of
saints, interpreted the whole of
The Eclogues as a reference to the coming of Christ and quoted a long passage of the Sybilline Book (
Book 8) containing an
acrostic in which the initials from a series of verses which read: Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour Cross.
~It is an interesting note that the parallels between the New Testament's Book of Revelation, and Cumaean Sibyl's work titled "The Mysteries of Osiris and Isis" where one can find what some consider the original passages to the biblical text, albeit before they were rewritten to form the well-known biblical text.~~This information gathered from the book "The Crucifixion of Truth" by Tony Bushby, additional references can be found in that text.
The Cumaean Sibyl is featured in the works of, among others, Virgil (
The Eclogues,
The Æneid),
Ovid (
Metamorphoses) and
Petronius (
The Satyricon). The
epigraph to
T.S. Eliot's
poem "
The Waste Land" is a quote from the
Satyricon where
Trimalchio states that he saw the withered Sibyl in a hanging jar and that she wanted to die.
Stories recounted in Virgil's Æneid
The Cumaean Sibyl prophesied by "singing the fates" and writing on
oak leaves. These would be arranged inside the entrance of her cave but, if the wind blew and scattered them, she would not help to reassemble the leaves to form the original prophesy again.
The Sibyl was a guide to the underworld (
Hades), its entry being at the nearby
crater of
Avernus.
Aeneas employed her services before his descent to the
lower world to visit his dead father
Anchises, but she warned him that it was no light undertaking::Trojan, Anchises' son, the descent of Avernus is easy.:All night long, all day, the doors of Hades stand open.:But to retrace the path, to come up to the sweet air of heaven,:That is labor indeed. (
Aeneid 6.10.)
Stories recounted in Ovid's Metamorphoses
Although she was a mortal, the Sibyl lived about a thousand years. This came about when
Apollo granted her a wish; she took up a handful of sand and asked to live for as many years as the grains of sand she held. But she didn't ask for enduring youth and Apollo allowed her body to wither away because the Sibyl did not consent to have sex. Her body grew smaller with age and eventually was kept in a jar (
ampulla). Eventually only her voice was left. (
Metamorphoses 14)
