Sibyllae
(in the sing., Lat.
Sibylla; Gr.
Σίβυλλα,
from Doric
σιο-βόλλα=
θεοῦ
βουλή, “the will of God”). The name given in antiquity to
inspired prophetesses of some deity, in particular Apollo. They were usually regarded as
maidens dwelling in lonely caves or by inspiring springs, who were possessed with a spirit of
divination, and gave forth prophetic utterances while under the influence of enthusiastic
frenzy. They were described sometimes as priestesses of Apollo, sometimes as his favourite
wives or daughters. We have no certain information as to their number, names, country, or
date. Though Plato (
Phaedr. 294 B) knew of only one, others mention two, three,
four (the Erythraean, the Samian, the Egyptian, and the Sardian), and even ten or twelve: the
Babylonian, the Libyan, the (elder and younger) Delphian, the Cimmerian, the (elder and
younger) Erythraean, the Samian, the Cumaean, the Hellespontine, the Phrygian, and the
Tiburtine.
In the earliest times they are mentioned as dwelling in the neighbourhood of the Trojan Ida
in Asia Minor, later at Erythrae in Ionia, in Samos, at Delphi, and at Cumae in Italy. The
most famous was the Erythraean Sibyl, Herophilé, who is usually considered
identical with the Cumaean, as she is represented as journeying by manifold wanderings from
her home to Cumae. Here she is said to have lived for many generations in the crypts beneath
the temple of Apollo, where she had even prophesied to Aeneas. In later times the designation
of Sibyl was also given to the prophetic nymph Albunea near Tibur (Lactant. i. 6, 12).
The Sibylline Books, so often met with in Roman history, had their
origin in a collection of oracular utterances in Greek hexameters, composed in the time of
Solon and Cyrus at Gergis on Mount Ida, and ascribed to the Hellespontic Sibyl, buried in the
temple of Apollo at Gergis. This collection was brought by way of Erythrae to Cumae, and
finally, in the time of the last king, to Rome. According to the legend, the Cumaean Sibyl
offered to Tarquinius Superbus nine books of prophecies; and as the king declined to purchase
them, owing to the exorbitant price she demanded, she burned all but three of them, which the
king purchased for the original price, and had them preserved in a vault beneath the
Capitoline temple of Iupiter (Varro,
ap. Lactant.
Inst.
Div. i. 6;
Dionys. iv. 62;
Orig. viii. 815). When they were destroyed in the burning of the
Capitol in B.C. 83, the Senate sent envoys to make a collection of similar oracular sayings
distributed over various places, in particular Ilium, Erythrae, and Samos. This new collection
was deposited in the restored temple, together with similar sayings of native
origin— e. g. those of the Sibyl at Tibur, of the brothers Marcius , and others.
From the Capitol they were transferred by Augustus as pontifex, in B.C. 12, to the temple of
Apollo on the Palatine, after they had been examined and copied; here they remained until
about A.D. 405. They are said to have been burned by Stilicho. The use of these oracles was
from the outset reserved for the State, and they were not consulted for the foretelling of
future events, but on the occasion of remarkable calamities, such as
pestilence, earthquake, and as a means of expiating portents. It was only the rites of
expiation prescribed by the Sibylline Books that were communicated to the public, and not the
oracles themselves. As these books recognized the gods worshipped and the rites observed in
the neighbourhood of Troy, they were the principal cause of the introduction of a series of
foreign deities and religious rites into the Roman State worship, of the amalgamation of
national deities with the corresponding deities of Greece, and a general modification of the
Roman religion after the Greek type.
Tarquinius is said to have intrusted the care of the books to a special
collegium of two men of patrician rank. After B.C. 367 their number was increased to
ten, half patrician and half plebeian; and in the first century B.C., probably in the time of
Sulla , five more were added. These officials were entitled respectively
duumviri, decemviri, and
quindecimviri sacris faciundis. They
were usually ex-consuls or ex-praetors. They held office for life, and were exempt from all
other public duties. They had the responsibility of keeping the books in safety and secrecy,
of consulting them at the order of the Senate, of interpreting the utterances they found
therein, and of causing the measures thus enjoined to be carried out; in particular they had
the superintendence of the worship of Apollo, the Magna Mater, and Ceres, which had been
introduced by the Sibylline Books. See Marquardt, iii. 358 foll.; and
Bouché-Leclercq,
Hist. de la Divination, ii. pp. 133 foll.
These Sibylline Books have no connection with a collection of Sibylline
Oracles in twelve books, written in Greek hexameters, which have come down to us. The
latter contain a medley of pretended prophecies by various authors and of very various dates,
from the middle of the second century B.C. to the fifth century A.D. They were composed partly
by Alexandrian Jews, partly by Christians, in the interests of their respective religions; and
in part they refer to events of the later Empire. They are edited by Alexandre
(Paris,
1841-56); Friedlieb
(Leipzig, 1852); Rzach
(Vienna, 1891);
and Diels
(Berlin, 1891). See Dechent in the
Zeitschrift
für Kirchengeschichte (1878); and an article in the
Edinburgh
Review for July, 1877.
