The Cumaean Sibyl (Latin : Sibylla Cumana) was the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Cumae, a Greek colony near Naples, Italy. The word sibyl comes (via Latin) from the ancient Greek word sibylla, meaning prophetess. There were many sibyls throughout the ancient world. Because of the importance of the Cumaean Sibyl in the legends of early Rome as codified in Virgil's Aeneid VI, and because of her proximity to Rome, the Cumaean Sibyl became the most famous among the Romans. The Erythraean Sibyl from modern-day Turkey was famed among Greeks, as was the oldest Hellenic oracle, the Sibyl of Dodona, dating to the second millennium BC according to Herodotus, favored in the east.
The Cumaean Sibyl is one of the four sibyls painted by Raphael at Santa Maria della Pace (see gallery below). She was also painted by Andrea del Castagno ( Uffizi Gallery, illustration right), and in the Sistine Ceiling of Michelangelo 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 besides the "Herophile" of Pausanias and Lactantius [1] or the Aeneid's "Deiphobe, daughter of Glaucus": "Amaltheia", "Demophile" or "Taraxandra" all appear in various references.
The story of the acquisition of the Sibylline Books by Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the semi-legendary last king of the Roman Kingdom, or Tarquinius Priscus, is one of the famous mythic elements of Roman history. [2]
Centuries ago, concurrent with the 50th Olympiad, not long before the expulsion of Rome's kings, an old woman "who was not a native of the country" [2] arrived incognita in Rome. She 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, whereupon she "disappeared from among men". [2]
The books were thereafter kept in the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill, Rome, to be consulted only in emergencies. The temple burned down in the 80s BC, and the books with it, necessitating a re-collection of Sibylline prophecies from all parts of the empire (Tacitus 6.12). These were carefully sorted and those determined to be legitimate were saved in the rebuilt temple. The Emperor Augustus had them moved to the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine Hill, where they remained for most of the remaining Imperial Period.
The Cumaean Sibyl features in the works of various Roman authors, including Virgil (the Eclogues, the Aeneid), Ovid (the Metamorphoses ) and Petronius (the Satyricon ).
The Cumaean Sibyl prophesied by "singing the fates" and writing on oak leaves. These were arranged inside the entrance of her cave, but if the wind blew and scattered them, she would not help reassemble the leaves to recreate the original prophecy.
The Sibyl was a guide to the underworld (Hades), whose entrance lay 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 labour indeed.— Aeneid 6.126-129.
The Sibyl acts as a bridge between the worlds of the living and the dead (cf. concept of liminality). She shows Aeneas the way to Avernus and teaches him what he needs to know about the dangers of their journey. [3]
Although she was a mortal, the Sibyl lived about a thousand years. She attained this longevity when Apollo offered to grant her a wish in exchange for her virginity; she took a handful of sand and asked to live for as many years as the grains of sand she held. Later, after she refused the god's love, he allowed her body to wither away because she failed to ask for eternal youth. Her body grew smaller with age and eventually was kept in a jar (ampulla). Eventually only her voice was left (Metamorphoses 14; compare the myth of Tithonus, the lover of Eos, who was also granted immortality but not eternal youth). [4]
The Cimmerian Sibyl may have been a doublet for the Cumaean Sibyl, since the designation Cimmerian refers to priestesses who lived underground near Lake Avernus. An oracular shrine dedicated to Apollo, as at Delphi, stood on the Acropolis of Cumae. An underground Roman road ran from the southeastern part of Cumae, through Mount Grillo to the shores of Lake Avernus. However, there are sources that distinguished the two Sibyls, such as those that noted it was the Cumaean and not the Cimmerian Sibyl who offered King Tarquin her book of prophecies. [5]
Tacitus proposed that Virgil might have been influenced by the Hebrew bible, and Constantine the Great interpreted the entirety of the Eclogues as a coded prophecy of the arrival of Christ. In the Oration of Constantine to the Assembly of the Saints, he quoted a passage of the eighth book of the pseudo-Sibylline Oracles, containing an acrostic in which the initials from the lines of a series of prophetic and apocalyptic verses read "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour, Cross". [6]
In the Middle Ages, both the Cumaean Sibyl and Virgil were widely considered prophets of the birth of Christ, especially by Augustine, who quoted the Sibylline Oracles in The City of God . The fourth of Virgil's Eclogues , in which the Sibyl delivers a prophecy, was interpreted as a messianic prophecy of the birth of Christ [7] [8] [9] by early Christians, who deemed Virgil a virtuous pagan; in particular, Dante personified 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, as had earlier works such as the Tree of Jesse miniature in the Ingeberg Psalter (c. 1210). [6]
The cave known as the "Antro della Sibilla" (“Cave of the Sibilla”) was discovered by Amedeo Maiuri in 1932, the identification of which he based on the description by Virgil in the 6th book of the Aeneid, and also on a description by an anonymous author known as pseudo-Justin. (Virg. Aen. 6. 45–99; Ps-Justin, 37.) The cave is a trapezoidal passage over 131 m long, running parallel to the side of the hill and cut out of the volcanic tuff stone, and leads to an innermost chamber where the Sibyl was thought to have prophesied.
A nearby tunnel through the acropolis now known as the "Crypta Romana" (part of Agrippa and Octavian's defenses in the war against Sextus Pompey) was previously identified as the Grotto of the Sibyl. The inner chamber was later used as a burial chamber during the 4th or 5th century AD (M. Napoli 1965, 105) by people living at the site.
Some archaeologists have proposed an alternative cave site as the home of the Sibyl. A tunnel complex near Baiae (part of the volcanically active Phlegraean fields) leads to an underground, geothermally heated stream that could be presented to visitors as the river Styx. The layout of the tunnels conforms to the description in the Aeneid of Aeneas's journey to the underworld and back. [12]
Lucius Tarquinius Superbus was the legendary seventh and final king of Rome, reigning 25 years until the popular uprising that led to the establishment of the Roman Republic. He is commonly known as Tarquin the Proud, from his cognomen Superbus.
An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination.
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid. A number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, were attributed to him in ancient times, but modern scholars generally regard these works as spurious, with the possible exception of a few short pieces.
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.
Avernus was an ancient name for a volcanic crater near Cumae (Cuma), Italy, in the region of Campania west of Naples. Part of the Phlegraean Fields of volcanoes, Avernus is approximately 3.2 kilometres (2.0 mi) in circumference. Within the crater is Lake Avernus.
Cumae was the first ancient Greek colony of Magna Graecia on the mainland of Italy and was founded by settlers from Euboea in the 8th century BCE. It became a rich Roman city, the remains of which lie near the modern village of Cuma, a frazione of the comune Bacoli and Pozzuoli in the Metropolitan City of Naples, Campania, Italy. The archaeological museum of the Campi Flegrei in the Aragonese castle contains many finds from Cumae.
The sibyls were prophetesses or oracles in Ancient Greece.
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, in an edition of the 6th or 7th century AD. They are not to be confused with the original Sibylline Books of the ancient Etruscans and Romans which were burned by order of the Roman general Flavius Stilicho in the 4th century AD. Instead, the text is an "odd pastiche" of Hellenistic and Roman mythology interspersed with Jewish, Gnostic and early Christian legend.
The Tiburtine Sibyl or Albunea was a Roman sibyl, whose seat was the ancient Etruscan town of Tibur.
The Sibylline Books were a collection of oracular utterances, set out in Greek hexameter verses, that, according to tradition, were purchased from a sibyl by the last king of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, and consulted at momentous crises through the history of the Roman Republic and the Empire.
The Delphic Sibyl was a woman who was a prophet associated with early religious practices in Ancient Greece and is said to have been venerated from before the Trojan Wars as an important oracle. At that time Delphi was a place of worship for Gaia, the mother goddess connected with fertility rituals that are thought to have existed throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. As needed to maintain the religious tradition, the role of sibyl would pass to another priestess at each site.
The 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 Greek word sibylla, meaning prophetess or oracle. The Hellespontine Sibyl was known, particularly in the late Roman Imperial period and the early Middle Ages, for a claim that she predicted the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. This claim comes from the Sibylline Oracles, which are not to be confused with the Sibylline Books.
The Persian Sibyl – also known as the Babylonian, Chaldaean, Hebrew or Egyptian Sibyl – was the prophetic priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle.
The Cimmerian Sibyl, by name Carmentis, was the prophetic priestess presiding over the Apollonian Oracle at Cimmerium in Italy, near Lake Avernus, Cumae area.
Eclogue4, also known as the FourthEclogue, is a Latin poem by the Roman poet Virgil. The poem is dated to 40 BC by its mention of the consulship of Virgil's patron Gaius Asinius Pollio.
Eclogue 4, also known as the Fourth Eclogue, is the name of a Latin poem by the Roman poet Virgil. Part of his first major work, the Eclogues, the piece was written around 40 BC, during a time of brief stability following the Treaty of Brundisium; it was later published in and around the years 39–38 BC. The work describes the birth of a boy, a supposed savior, who once of age will become divine and eventually rule over the world. During late antiquity and the Middle Ages, a desire emerged to view Virgil as a virtuous pagan, and as such the early Christian theologian Lactantius, and St. Augustine—to varying degrees—reinterpreted the poem to be about the birth of Jesus Christ.
The Trials of Apollo is a pentalogy of fantasy adventure and mythological fiction novels written by American author Rick Riordan that collectively form a sequel to the Heroes of Olympus series. It is set in the same world as Riordan's Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus series and references characters and happenings from earlier stories. A supplementary book, Camp Jupiter Classified, has also been released in addition to the main series.
The Sibilla Cumana is an oil painting on canvas by the Italian Baroque painter Domenicho Zampieri (Domenichino) housed in the Capitoline Museum in Rome, Italy.
The Golden Bough is a painting from 1834 by the English painter J. M. W. Turner. It depicts the episode of the golden bough from the Aeneid by Virgil. It is in the collection of the Tate galleries.
The Tyrant's Tomb is an American fantasy novel based on Greek and Roman mythology written by American author Rick Riordan. It was first published on September 24, 2019, and is the fourth book in The Trials of Apollo series, the second spin-off of the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series.