Cumaean Sibyl

The Cumaean Sibyl (Latin: Sibylla Cumana) was the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Cumae, a Greek colony near Naples, Italy.

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 Cumaean Sibyl features in the works of various Roman authors, including Virgil (the Eclogues, the Aeneid), Ovid (the Metamorphoses) and Petronius (the Satyricon).

[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.

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.

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.

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.