Cumaean Sibyl

The Cumaean Sibyl was the priestess and prophetess of Apollo at Cumae, a Greek city on the coast of Campania near Naples. She is best known from Virgil’s Aeneid, where she guides Aeneas through the Underworld, and from Ovid, who tells how Apollo granted her a very long life without eternal youth. Roman tradition also linked her with the Sibylline Books, the oracular collection kept at Rome.

The Sibyl at Cumae

Cumae, on the coast of Campania, was founded by settlers from Chalcis and from Cyme, and Strabo calls it the oldest of all the Greek cities of Sicily and Italy (Strabo, Geography 5.4.4). Virgil places the Sibyl’s cave near the heights over which Apollo presides, in a great cavern hewn into the rock of Euboea’s side, with a hundred wide entrances and a hundred mouths from which the voices rush out as the Sibyl’s answers (Virgil, Aeneid 6.9–12, 6.42–44). She is the priestess of Phoebus and Trivia (Apollo and Diana), and Virgil gives her the name Deiphobe, daughter of Glaucus (Aeneid 6.35–36). When the god possesses her, her face and color change, and she delivers her answers in dark riddles through which Apollo drives her like a rider with reins and goad (Aeneid 6.45–51, 6.98–101).

Other Sibyls were known in antiquity, and Pausanias lists several. Of the Sibyl of Cumae, whom the historian Hyperochus called Demo, he reports that the Cumaeans could point to no oracle of hers, but showed a small stone urn in a sanctuary of Apollo in which her bones were said to lie (Pausanias 10.12.8).

Apollo’s Gift

Ovid tells the story in the Sibyl’s own words, as she leads Aeneas back from the Underworld. Aeneas had called her a goddess and promised her a temple, but she says she is not one. She would have been given everlasting light, she says, if she had yielded her virginity to Phoebus when he loved her. Apollo, hoping to win her with gifts, told her to choose what she wished. She held up a heap of sand and asked for as many birthdays as there were grains, but forgot to ask that the years be years of youth. Apollo still offered her eternal youth if she would accept his love; she refused, and has remained unmarried (Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.129–142).

Now the happier years have turned their back, and weak old age approaches with trembling steps. She has already lived seven centuries, and has three hundred harvests and three hundred vintages still to see to match the grains of sand. One day, she says, she will be shrunken from so large a body to a tiny one, and be consumed by age until she is no longer recognizable as one whom a god loved; but her voice will be recognized, for the fates will leave her a voice (Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.143–153). Virgil, writing earlier, already calls her the “long-lived priestess” (longaeva sacerdos, Aeneid 6.321).

The Sibyl and Aeneas

In the Aeneid, Aeneas comes to Cumae to ask the Sibyl for a way to see his dead father Anchises. She tells him: “The descent to Avernus is easy; night and day the door of dark Dis stands open, but to retrace your step and escape to the upper air, that is the task, that is the toil” (Aeneid 6.126–129). She tells him to find the golden bough that opens the way (Aeneid 6.136–148) and goes with him through the Underworld, speaking to him beside Cocytus and the Styx (Aeneid 6.321–324). At the end Anchises escorts his son and the Sibyl to the twin gates of Sleep and sends them out through the ivory gate (Aeneid 6.893–898). Ovid retells the journey briefly: the Sibyl shows him the golden branch in the grove of Juno of Avernus and, as his guide, helps him to see the realm of Orcus (Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.101–121).

The Sibylline Books

The Romans consulted the Sibylline Books in times of crisis: Livy records their use against a plague and portents (Livy 3.10.7, 5.13.5, 7.27.1) and the law that ten keepers were to be chosen, five patricians and five plebeians (Livy 6.42.2). Roman tradition attributed the first acquisition of the books to the last king, Tarquin; in the story, as told by later writers, an old woman offered him nine books, and when he refused her price she burned three, then three more, and sold him the last three at the original price; after that she was never seen again (Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 1.19). When the Capitol burned in the Social War, the Romans sent to Samos, Ilium, Erythrae, Africa, and Sicily to collect verses attributed to the Sibyl and to separate the genuine ones, and Augustus later ordered that private collections be handed in to the city praetor (Tacitus, Annals 6.12).

Cumaean Sibyl Sources

Virgil, Aeneid 6.9–12, 6.35–51, 6.98–101, 6.126–148, 6.321–324, 6.893–898; Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.101–153; Strabo, Geography 5.4.4; Pausanias 10.12.8; Livy 3.10.7, 5.13.5, 6.42.2, 7.27.1; Tacitus, Annals 6.12; Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 1.19.

See Also: Apollo, Aeneas, Anchises, Hades