Sibylline Books- Roman ArtifactArtifact"Libri Fatales"
Also known as: Libri Sibyllini
Description
The Cumaean Sibyl offered Tarquinius Superbus nine books of prophecy. He refused. She burned three, offered the remaining six at the same price, and he refused again. She burned three more. He bought the last three for the price of nine.
Mythology & Lore
The Sibyl's Bargain
The Cumaean Sibyl came to King Tarquinius Superbus with nine books of prophecy and named an enormous price. Aulus Gellius records what followed. The king refused. She burned three books in front of him and offered the remaining six at the same price. He refused again. She burned three more. Tarquinius bought the last three for the original price of nine. What the other six contained, no one would ever know.
The Stone Vault
The three surviving books were sealed in a stone vault beneath the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline and placed under guard of specially appointed priests. The Senate alone could order them opened, and only when disaster struck: plague, prodigies the pontiffs could not explain. The priests would descend, consult the books, and return with instructions. The books never predicted the future. They prescribed the ritual that would fix the present.
In 204 BCE, during the Second Punic War, the books prescribed something extraordinary. Livy records that they called for the sacred stone of the Great Mother Cybele to be brought from Pessinus in Anatolia. The Senate obeyed. A delegation sailed east, and the black stone arrived in Rome to public celebration. Hannibal left Italy the following year.
The Burning
The Capitoline Temple burned in 83 BCE, and the original books burned with it. The Senate sent envoys to Erythrae, Samos, and other sites where sibyls had once spoken, gathering whatever prophecies survived. The reconstructed collection served Rome through the late Republic and Empire.
In 405 CE, the Christian general Stilicho had them burned. No one sent envoys to recover them this time.