Sibyl
500 BC): The Sibyl, with frenzied mouth uttering things not to be laughed at, unadorned and unperfumed, yet reaches to a thousand years with her voice by aid of the god.
6), Varro (first century BC) lists these ten: the Persian, the Libyan, the Delphic, the Cimmerian, the Erythræan, the Samian, the Cumæan, the Hellespontine (in Trojan territory), the Phrygian (at Ancyra), and the Tiburtine (named Albunea).
Burkert notes (1985, p. 117) that the conquest of Cumae by the Oscans in the fifth century destroyed the tradition, but provides a terminus ante quem for a Cumaean sibyl.
In Virgil's Fourth Eclogue, the Cumaean sibyl foretells the coming of a savior—possibly a flattering reference to the poet's patron, Augustus.
This earliest documented Delphic Sibyl would have predated by hundreds of years the priestess of Apollo active at the oracle from around the eighth century BC who was known as Pythia.
Apollodorus of Erythrae affirms the Erythraean Sibyl to have been his own countrywoman and to have predicted the Trojan War and prophesied to the Greeks who were moving against Ilium both that Troy would be destroyed and that Homer would write falsehoods.
The so-called Libyan Sibyl was identified with prophetic priestesses presiding over the ancient Zeus-Amon (Zeus represented with the horns of Amon) oracle at the Siwa Oasis in the Western Desert of Egypt.
[26] It purports to prophesy the advent of a final emperor named Constans, vanquishing the foes of Christianity, bringing about a period of great wealth and peace, ending paganism, and converting the Jews.
The Basilica of Santa Maria in Aracoeli crowning the Campidoglio, Rome, is particularly associated with the Sibyl, because a medieval tradition referred the origin of its name to an otherwise unattested altar, Ara Primogeniti Dei, said to have been raised to the "firstborn of God" by the emperor Augustus, who had been warned of his advent by the sibylline books: in the church the figures of Augustus and of the Tiburtine Sibyl are painted on either side of the arch above the high altar.
In the nineteenth century, Rodolfo Lanciani recalled that at Christmastime the presepio included a carved and painted figure of the sibyl pointing out to Augustus the Virgin and Child, who appeared in the sky in a halo of light.
"The two figures, carved in wood, have now [1896] disappeared; they were given away or sold thirty years ago, when a new set of images was offered to the Presepio by prince Alexander Torlonia."
(Lanciani, 1896 ch 1) Like prophets, Renaissance sibyls forecasting the advent of Christ appear in monuments: modelled by Giacomo della Porta in the Santa Casa at Loreto, painted by Raphael in Santa Maria della Pace, by Pinturicchio in the Borgia apartments of the Vatican, engraved by Baccio Baldini, a contemporary of Botticelli, and graffites by Matteo di Giovanni in the pavement of the Duomo of Siena.
Shakespeare references the sibyls in his plays, including Othello, Titus Andronicus, The Merchant of Venice, and especially Troilus and Cressida.
While the text speaks of the coming of Jesus Christ, the composer reflects the mystical aura of the prophecies by using chromaticism in an extreme manner, a compositional technique that became very fashionable at the time.
The sayings of sibyls and oracles were notoriously open to interpretation (compare Nostradamus) and were constantly used for both civil and cult propaganda.
These sayings and sibyls should not be confused with the extant sixth-century collection of Sibylline Oracles, which typically predict disasters rather than prescribe solutions.
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, c. 400–350 BCE.
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,[31] and at others Gergithia ‘of Gergis’.
The first writer who is known to have distinguished several sibyls is Heraclides Ponticus in his book On Oracles, in which he appears to have enumerated at least three, namely the Phrygian, the Erythraean, and the Hellespontine.
