Sibyl- Roman FigureMortal"Prophetess of Apollo"

The Thousand Grains

She picked up a handful of sand and asked Apollo for as many years of life as there were grains. He granted the wish: a thousand years. But she had forgotten to ask for youth, and when she refused his love, he held her to the letter of the bargain. She would live every one of those years, and she would age through every one of them.

By the time Aeneas came to her cave at Cumae, she had lived seven hundred years. Three hundred remained. She told him this herself, in Ovid's account: that she would shrink and wither until nothing was left of her but a voice.

The Burning of the Books

She came to Rome's last king, Tarquinius Superbus, carrying nine books of prophecy. She named a price. He laughed. She burned three books and offered the remaining six at the same price. He refused again. She burned three more. Tarquinius bought the last three for what she had asked for all nine.

The books were kept in a stone chest in the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline, guarded by a priestly college that consulted them only when the Senate ordered it and only in times of crisis. Through these verses, new gods entered Rome: Cybele from Phrygia, Asclepius from Epidaurus. When the temple burned in 83 BCE, the originals were lost. The Senate sent envoys across the Mediterranean to collect what fragments of Sibylline prophecy survived.

A Hundred Mouths

Virgil describes her sanctuary as a cavern hollowed from the cliff at Cumae, with a hundred openings from which her prophecies rushed out in a hundred voices. When Apollo seized her, her face changed color and her hair flew wild. She fought the god even as she spoke, like a horse fighting the bit.

She wrote her prophecies on leaves and arranged them at the cave's entrance. While they stayed in order, the message could be read. But if the door opened and a wind scattered them, the words were lost. She would not rearrange them. Aeneas, warned of this, begged her to speak aloud instead.

The Golden Bough

The Sibyl told Aeneas he must find the Golden Bough before she could guide him to the underworld. Two doves, sacred to Venus, led him to the tree where the branch grew. He plucked it and returned.

They descended through the cave at Avernus. The Sibyl led him past the shades of the unburied dead crowding the bank of the Styx, unable to cross until their bodies received proper rites. She showed him how to present the Golden Bough to Charon the ferryman and how to quiet Cerberus with drugged cakes. Through Tartarus they could not pass, but the Sibyl described what lay inside: Tityos with his liver eaten each day and regrown each night, Ixion bound to his wheel.

In Elysium they found Anchises, who showed Aeneas the souls waiting to be born as Romans.

I Want to Die

Petronius preserves her ending. By his time, she had shrunk to something that fit in a jar, hung from the ceiling at Cumae. Children came and asked her what she wanted. Her answer, in a voice almost too thin to hear: "I want to die."