Sibyl: Encyclopedia - Sibyl

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.

The mark of a Sibyl possessed with the second sight is the gift to be able to take her eyes out and then put them back in.

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 BC:

Sibyls are not identified by a personal name, but by names that refer to the location of their temenos, for shrine.

Sibyl - The number of Sibyls

Like Heraclitus, Plato speaks of only 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 AD, quoting from a lost work of Varro, 1st century BC) 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.

• The 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 Noah. [1]

• The Libyan Sibyl

The so-called Libyan Sibyl was identified with prophetic priestess presiding over the ancient Zeus Amon (Zeus represented with the horns of Amon) oracle at the Siwa Oasis in the Western Desert of Egypt, (incorrectly placed in the map). The oracle here was consulted by Alexander after his conquest of Egypt.

The Libyan Sibyl, by name Lamia, meaning Serpent or Medusa.

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

• The 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.

• The 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

The Erythraean Sibyl was sited at Erythrae, a town in Ionia opposite Chios. Apollodorus of Erythrae affirms the Erythraean Sibyl to have been his own countrywoman and to have predicted the Trojan War and prophesised to the Greeks who were moving against Ilium both that Troy would be destroyed and that 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.

• The Samian Sibyl

The Samian sibyl's oracular site was at Samos.

• The 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

The Hellespontine, or Trojan Sibyl presided over the Apollonian oracle at Dardania.

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

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

• The Tiburtine Sibyl

To the classical sibyls of the Greeks, the Romans added a tenth, the Tiburtine Sibyl, whose seat was the ancient Etruscan town of Tibur (modern Tivoli).

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:

An apocalyptic pseudo-prophecy exists, attributed to the Tiburtine Sibyl , written ca 380 CE, but with revisions and interpolations added at later dates [2]. It purports to prophesy, after the fact (see vaticinium ex eventu), the arrival of the Christian emperor, Constantine, beginning:

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.

Sibyl - 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. Five sibyls were painted on the Sistine Chapel ceiling by Michelangelo; the Delphic Sibyl, Lybian Sibyl, Persian Sibyl, Cumaean Sibyl and the Erythraean Sibyl. 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[3].

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:

Sibyl - Sibylline books

The sayings of sibyls and oracles were notoriously open to interpretation (compare Nostradamus) 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 (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

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Sibyl", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki