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Sibyllae




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    SIBYLLAE, the Sibylls, women who, pretending to be divinely inspired, predicted future events.  Authors agree neither as to who the Sibyls were, nor respecting their numbers, nor the times and places where they prophesied.  Some reckon fourteen, others ten, others only four, and even three.  The principal were the Erythrean and the Cumaean.  It is the Sibyll of Cumaea in Italy, whom Virgil makes AEneas consult, at a time when, according to the fable of Apollo's gift of longevity to her, she had lived some hundred out of the thousand years allotted to her.   The same attribute of supernaturally prolonged existence has been given to another of these prophetesses; so that to signify an extremely old woman, she is termed a Sibyll.  Nothing is known of the way in which, what are called, the Sibylline verses were composed.Among the records of antiquity no information is to be found as to how this alleged mass of predictions, put into hexameters, happended to be discovered, nor at what period it appeared, nor who was the author of it.  The early Romans boasted of being the preservers of the Cumaean Sibylls' verses.  But all that their historians state which can be construed to bear on the subject, is the well-known story they tell in connection with the reign of Tarquinius Superbus, of a woman who offered to that prince nine books of this prophetic poetry, for three hundred pieces of gold, and obtained her price after burning six and leaving Tarquin only three for his money.  So profoundly secret was the custody of this precious deposit, that fifteen officers formed specially into a college alone were allowed to see and examine it.  They were called the Sibylline Quindecemvirs; and so implicit was the popular belief in the truth of the things foretold in this collection, that the Romans, whenever they had a war to undertake, or whenever pestilence, famine, or any extraordinary calamity afflicted the city or the country, invariably had recourse to it.  The senate itself set the example of consulting these mysterious volumes on occasions of seditious insurrections or of any serious defeat sustained by the armies of the republic, or when the appearance of produgies seemed to threated some great misfortune.  Many examples are furnished in the annals of Rome, which shew the solemnity with which the Sibylls' books were referred to in similar conjunctures.  The Sibylline verses continued to be held in respect even under the emperors, but a large portion of the senate having become professed Christians about the time of Theodosius, the sentiment of the veneration for these supposed revelations began to decline, and at length Stilicho, the general of Honorius, caused them to be burnt.

 

 

 

Such, however, was the degree of superstitious regard which the different Sibyls and their oracles had at one time obtained, that some of them received divine honours; the Sibylla Tiburtina was worshipped at Tibur as a goddess; and the Sibylla Cumaea had her temple at Cume.

   On a denarius of the Manlia family, the obverse bears a female head, beneath which is the word SIBVLLA; on the reverse of the coin is a tripod, with two stars above it; the whole within an ornamented circle, including the name of L. TORQVATus III. VIR.

   The learned have hitherto adduced nothing either probable or consistent on the subject of these types.  Havercamp, in Morell, inclines to regard the female head as that of the Etythraean Sibyl, and, in confirmation, points to the tripos, as the sure and constant sign of the quindecemvirs specially entrusted with the guardianship and inspection of the Sibyline books.  Eckhel offers no explanation of his own; nevertheless, in describing the medal, he speaks of the caput Sibylla, and shews the accompanying word, SIBVLLA, to have been written for SIBYLLA (the V. being on ancient monuments not unfrequently substituted for Y.)  If the same Lucius Manlius Torquatus who struck the coin had been called XV. VIR; instead of III. VIR, the direct allusion of these types to the Sibyll and her sacred books would have been indubitably clear.  It is, however, not unlikely that he who, as Monetal Triumvir to Caesar, has encircled the reverse with his ancestral collar (torques) should have decreed the word SIBYLLA on one side, and the tripos figured on the other, to be sufficient designations of the Sibylline Oracles entrusted to the authorities of Rome.  And, considering the importance in which they were ostensibly held, and the care bestowed on their preservation, as well as the many ocassions on which they were consulted, the matter of surprise is that these denarii should be the only known memorials, at least of a numismatic kind, pointing to so favourite and long prevailing a superstition.See Manlia.


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