Michelangelo's rendering of the Cumaean Sibyl The Cumaean Sibyl was the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Cumae, a Greek colony located near Naples,Italy.
The word Sibyl comes (via Latin) from the ancient Greek word sibylla, meaning prophetess. There were many Sibyls in the ancient world, but because of the importance of the Cumaean Sibyl in the legends of early Rome, she became one of the most noted and famous, and was often simply referred to as The Sibyl.
There are various names for the Cumaean Sibyl: Amaltheia, Demophile, Deiphobe, Herophile, Taraxandra (in Vergil's Aeneid she is called Deiphobe.)
The story of the acquisition of the Sibylline Books by Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the semi-legendary last king of the Roman Kingdom, is one of the famous mythic elements of Roman history. The Cumaean Sibyl 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 (another version has the price doubling each time.)
In the Middle Ages both the Cumaean Sibyl and Vergil were considered prophets of the birth of Christ because the fourth of Vergil's Eclogues appears to contain a Messianic prophecy by the Sibyl, and this was seized on by early Christians as such - one reason why Dante later chose Vergil as his guide through the underworld and Michelangelo chose to feature the Cumaean Sibyl in the Sistine Chapel as prominently as the Old Testament prophets.
It was said in some of the ancient poems that the whispers of the Sibyl would be heard for a thousand years, and some have said that they will resound and echo for all eternity.
The following stories are recounted in Vergil's Æneid:
The Cumaean Sibyl prophesized by “singing the fates” and writing on leaves. These would be arranged inside the entrance of her cave but, if the wind blew and scattered them, she would not help to reassemble the leaves to form the original prophesy again.
The Sibyl was a guide to the underworld (Hades,) the entry being at the nearby crater of Avernus. Aeneas employed her services to visit his dead father Anchises.
Although she was a mortal, the Sibyl lived about a thousand years. This came about when Apollo granted her a wish; she took up a handful of sand and asked to live for as many years as the grains of sand she held. But she didn't ask for enduring youth and Apollo allowed her body to wither away because the Sibyl did not consent to have sex. Her body grew smaller with age and eventually was kept in a jar (ampulla). Eventually only her voice was left.
The Cumaean Sibyl is featured in the works of, among others, Vergil (The Eclogues, Æneid) and Petronius (Satyricon). The epigraph to T.S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land" is a quote from the Satyricon where Trimalchio states that he saw the withered Sibyl in a hanging jar and that she wanted to die.
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