Sibyl of Cumae

The cumana sibila of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel.

Cueva de la Sibila de Cumas.

Sibila cumana by Andrea del Castagno.

Fresco Sibilas receiving instructions from angels of Rafael Sanzio in Santa Maria della Pace. The cumana is the first on the left.

In Greek mythology, the Sibyl of Cumae or cuman sibyl was a native of Erythras, an important city of Ionia (on the west coast of present-day Turkey). Her father was Theodore and her mother was a nymph, and it is said that she was born in a cave on Mount Coricus. She was born with the gift of prophecy and made her predictions in verse. She was known as Sibyl of Cumae because she spent most of her life in this ancient city of Magna Graecia, on the Tyrrhenian coast, in present-day Campania, southern Italy.

History

In ancient times she was considered the most important of the ten known sibyls. This was also called Deiphoba, a word that means deity or form of god. Apollo was the god who inspired the prophecies of the sibyls and promised that he would grant a wish to the sibyl of Cumae. She took a handful of sand in her hand and asked to live as many years as particles of earth she had taken; but she forgot to ask for her eternal youth, so with the years she began to waste away so much that they had to lock her up in a cage that they hung from the temple of Apollo in Cumae. Legend has it that she lived nine human lives of 120 years each.

It is also told about her - and this is how the Aeneid reports it - that on one occasion she guided Aeneas, a Trojan prince, through Hades to visit his father Anchises.

On another occasion, the sibyl appeared before the Roman king Tarquin the Proud as a very old woman and offered him nine prophetic books at an extremely high price. Tarquino refused thinking of getting them cheaper and so the sibyl destroyed three of the books. She then offered him the remaining six at the same price as at the beginning; Tarquin refused again and she destroyed another three. Fearing that they would all disappear, the king agreed to buy the last three but paid for them the price that the sibyl had asked for the nine. These three books were kept in the temple of Jupiter and were consulted in very special situations. In 83 B.C. C. fire destroyed the original so-called Sibylline Books and a new collection had to be formed that has not survived to this day because in 405 the Roman general Stilicho ordered its destruction. These books exerted great influence on Roman religion until the reign of Augustus.

It seems that Cicero was able to read the sibylline books as he says that they were worked and written with art and diligence and that they were acrostics. Saint Augustine in his City of God, book XVIII, chap. 23 speaks of an acrostic of the Eritrean sibyl whose initial letters formed this sense: Ιησούς Χριστός, Υιός του Θεού, Σωτήρας, Jesus Christ son of God, savior.

Attributes

The sibyl of Cumae is usually represented with some books as a reference to the sibylline books that contain the oracles. She is usually dressed in luxurious clothing.

Presence in art

The Sibyl of Cumae appears, for example, in the ceiling frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, the work of Michelangelo, in the Roman church of Santa Maria della Pace, the work of Raphael Sanzio, in the Capella Nuova of the Cathedral of Orvieto, in the Ghent Polyptych or in a floor mosaic in the Siena Cathedral.