Sibyls and Sibylline oracles. 2. The Sibylline books

Once upon a time, in early Rome, a mysterious old woman came to king Tarquin to sell him a collection of books.

By the 1st century BCE the woman in the story was identified as the Cumaean Sibyl. We don’t know if that was always the case. But, based on that identification, the books were called the Sibyllini libri (Sibylline books) or Sibyllina oracula (Sibylline oracles). For clarity I’ll consistently call them the ‘Sibylline books’, as I explained in Part 1.

19th century illustration of the Capitoline and temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus in the Republican period. (Source: Friedrich Polack, Geschichtsbilder aus der allgemeinen und vaterländischen Geschichte, 1903 edition, fig. 61)

The story is a fable, but the books were real. Dionysios says they were held in a stone chest in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus and curated by a body of priests — the decemviri sacris faciundis, ‘ten men appointed for sacred rites’.

There was a fire in 83 BCE, and the books were destroyed. A new temple was built. The Romans had new books made, and Sulla expanded the priests to fifteen — the quindecimviri. In 28 BCE the replacement books were rehoused in the newly built temple of Palatine Apollo. They continued to be used for several more centuries.

The Sibylline books weren’t primarily books of predictions: they were instructions for rituals, which also mentioned predictions in passing. The idea seems to have been that, when required, priests might choose a ritual from the books, then perform that ritual, to ensure purity, or ward off evil. Some extracts were made public, but a complete text wasn’t widely known.

The sale of the books

The most famous thing about the books is the story of how they were sold. Every version of the fable goes back to Varro’s book Antiquitates rerum divinarum, ‘Ancient matters concerning the gods’, written between 63 and 49 BCE (see Part 1).

Varro’s book is lost, but the story appears in Dionysios of Halikarnassos, who came to Rome around 30 BCE, and Dionysios attributes the story to Varro. Somewhat different versions appear in Aulus Gellius, Lactantius, and shorter allusions elsewhere.

Dionysios of Halikarnassos 4.62 (citing Varro); Aulus Gellius 1.19; Lactantius, Institutiones divinae 1.6. Further references: Varro, Antiquitates frs. 56–60 ed. Cardauns; Cicero, On divination 2.(54).110–112; Pliny, Natural history 13.(27).88; Phlegon of Tralles, FGrHist 257 F 36.10; Servius, commentary on Aeneid 6.72.

Here’s the gist, skipping over some variations.

An old woman comes to visit king Tarquin, carrying nine books of oracular instructions. But she asks for an incredible price, 300 gold philippics, so Tarquin just laughs. She promptly burns three of the books, and offers the remaining six at the same price. Tarquin laughs even harder, so she burns another three, and offers the last three again, still at the same exorbitant price. This time Tarquin realises it’s no joke, and he agrees to the sale. The old woman departs and is never seen again.

How much of this is real? Well, Tarquin was a real 6th century BCE king — though the sources vary on whether it’s Tarquinius Priscus or Tarquinius Superbus — but no real records from that period ever existed. The books were real, but they weren’t anything like as old as that. And the Sibyl is purely mythical.

Just in case you’re tempted to think there’s something to the story, bear in mind: the price the old woman asks for is in 4th century BCE Macedonian coinage. 6th century Rome didn’t have coinage.

After the original Sibylline books were burned in 83 BCE, the Romans had replacements made. Allegedly these were pieced together from many places, including cities in Italy, but especially from Erythrai in Anatolia.

Later sources tell us that the Sibylline books were written in Greek hexameter verse, and they had acrostics: the first letters of each line also spell out hexameter verses. That’s what Cicero and Dionysios describe, and it’s also what we see in the surviving extracts.

The surviving quotations

An excerpt of Phlegon of Tralles’ On marvels (2nd century CE) quotes seventy lines from the Sibylline books. Phlegon doesn’t explain how the quotation came to be public knowledge. He treats it as a single quotation, but it’s clear that it’s actually two separate quotations, of 29 and 41 lines. The Greek text is most easily found in Jacoby’s Fragmente der griechischen Historiker.

FGrHist 257 F 36.10 = Hansen 1996: 40–43 (translation and commentary) = cod. Heidelb. Palatinus. gr. 398 fols. 226r–227r.

The first quotation (lines 1–29) gives instructions for rites to honour Demeter and Persephone. A public coin collection is to be made to fund a ritual sacrifice performed by women, with roles grouped by age (girls, married women, and old women). No alcohol is to be involved in the ritual. The duty of the married women is to carry torches, suggesting that the ritual is supposed to take place at night. The girls sacrifice bulls to Demeter and cows to Persephone, and the old women place the offerings in a fire.

The second quotation (30–70) describes further rituals, this time an expiatory rite to avert evil: an ox to be sacrificed to Demeter, Persephone, and Hades: a goat to Apollo; and a cow to Hera. Again, the text specifies that the ritual must not involve alcohol. The second half of the text is an ex eventu ‘prediction’ of the Greek colonisation of Cumae, and the arrival of Trojans in Italy — implying that the speaker should be understood as the Cumaean Sibyl.

The temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus as depicted in the TV series Rome (2005–2007)

The acrostics

The text has acrostics embedded in the first letter of each line, just as Cicero and Dionysios describe. Each acrostic spells out more hexameter verse. Some letters are missing in the acrostics, implying that the quotations have some lines missing. The first acrostic, in lines 1–29, goes:

<μ>οῖραν ὀπισθομα<θῶν, τίν’ ἔ>φυ πᾶς εἰς τόπον ἐλθ<εῖν>

Everyone learns too late their fate, the place they’re destined to go

This line doesn’t appear in the text Phlegon quotes: he starts with the line corresponding to the ο of <μ>οῖραν. Traditionally scholars have thought the acrostic should be understood as line 1, so that μοῖραν provides its own first letter (1996: 129–130). It’s grammatically possible for the acrostic to act as line 1, but I have doubts: it isn’t how Cicero describes the acrostics (On divination 2.(54).112), and it isn’t what we see in the second quotation.

There, the first letters of each line are provided by lines that Phlegon quotes (though there are letters missing elsewhere):

ἵππωι ἀγαλλόμενος, πάλιν αὖ <κα>κὸν εἰς νέον ἥξει
αὐτά<ρ>. . .

Exulting in his horse, he will come back to a new evil,
then . . .

Lines 59 and 60 have to be swapped around to make the νε of νέον.

Here, at least, I’ll entertain the possibility that there’s a line missing for the μ of <μ>οῖραν. That means the quoted text and the missing lines are as follows, using Jacoby’s line numbers (and additions in parentheses). Quotation 1:

• line 1a: the first acrostic
• (line 1b: a missing line corresponding to μ in the first acrostic?)
• 1–13, as quoted by Phlegon
• 13a–g: seven lines missing, corresponding to the missing -θωντινε- in the first acrostic
• 14–29, as quoted
• 29a–c: three lines missing, corresponding to -ειν in the first acrostic

And quotation 2:

• (lines 29d–e: the second acrostic; Jacoby prints it only in the critical apparatus)
• lines 30–52, as quoted
• 52a–b: two lines missing, corresponding to κα- in the second acrostic
• 53–70, as quoted
• an unknown number of lines missing, starting with the ρ of αὐτά<ρ>

Which Sibylline books?

Phlegon says the quotation comes from an occasion in 125 BCE when the senate commanded the hieromnēmones — ‘rite officials’, presumably the decemviri — to consult the Sibylline books on the occasion of the birth of an intersex baby (androgynos). If that’s right, the quotation is from the pre-83 BCE books.

Modern scholars have taken Phlegon at his word. But their focus has been on showing that the quotation is close to 125 BCE because it’s much later than the Roman regal period. It used to need argument to show that it’s Hellenistic. That isn’t a matter for debate these days.

Diels 1890: 77–103; Parke 1988: 137–138; Hansen 1996: 126–127; McInerney 2016.

But I don’t know that there’s been any consideration of the possibility that the quotations are from the replacement books that were compiled after 83 BCE. On balance I don’t think a post-83 date is compelling. But there are good reasons to take it seriously:

• When we’re told that the books were in hexameter, that they contained acrostics, and that they were in Greek, all of that information comes from post-Varro sources.
• No source other than Phlegon claims to describe the pre-83 BCE books.
• Dionysios — who cites Varro — explicitly states that the acrostics are a feature of the replacement books, and that acrostics are a sign that a passage isn’t an ‘interpolation’.
• When Dionysios describes the compilation of the replacement books, doesn’t claim that they replicated the originals, or that replication was even a goal.
• The quotations are very clearly not from the 6th century BCE. That’s been obvious since Diels, who dated both of them to the last decade of the 200s BCE, based on language, historical context, and metrical features. Some modern studies have considered dates as late as 83.

Just to emphasise: there are no sources telling us what the original books looked like, and there’s no real reason to assume that they looked anything like the replacement books that Varro talked about. It’s perfectly imaginable that Phlegon linked them to an incident of an intersex baby born in 125 BCE solely because lines 4–5 refer to an intersex baby.

The profile of metrical irregularities points to a date no earlier than the 200s BCE:

• 8 cases of ‘Attic’ correption (short syllable before a mute + liquid), 5× word-internal: 10 ἀθροίσας, 34 πάτραι, 44 ἴδρις, 51 πατρίοισι, 56 πατρίοισι; 3× at word-boundary: 48 Παιήονα κρᾶτα, 54 Κυμαίδα πρόφρονες, 68 ὔμμι χρόνος
• 1 violation of Meyer’s First Law (avoidance of a word starting in beats 1–2 and ending in beat 4a or 4b): 33
• 7 violations of Meyer’s Second Law (avoidance of a word with the rhythm ⏑ – in beats 4b–5): 29, 40, 52, 54, 56, 63, 65
• 5 violations of Meyer’s Third Law (avoidance of a word/phrase with the rhythm ⏕ – ⏕ – in beats 6–9): 0a, 27, 36, 41, 66
• 2 violations of Hermann’s Bridge (avoidance of a word/phrase with the rhythm ⏑ – ⏕ – × at line-end, i.e. in beats 8b–12): 41, 51
• 1 violation of Varro’s Bridge (avoidance of a word ending in beat 6 unless it is a monosyllable – or disyllable ⏑⏑): 32
• 1 violation of Tiedke-Meyer’s Law (avoidance of a word/phrase with the rhythm – ⏕ – in beats 7–9): 44
• (No violations of Wernicke’s Law)

I omit irregularities involving a word boundary preceded by a monosyllable, and those involving a word boundary followed by an enclitic.

A closer look at Attic correption shows that the rate of lengthening before mute + liquid consonant clusters is relatively high at word boundaries (16.7%), but considerably lower than most other poets within a word (50.0%). I haven’t been able to track down figures for hexameter poets, but among elegiac poets the closest fit is Mnasalkes (3rd century BCE).

For figures on the incidence of word-initial and word-internal Attic correption in elegiac poets see Slings 1993.

This profile of metrical irregularities would be as unsurprising in a 1st century BCE poet as in the 3rd century. So I think a more compelling fact pointing to a slightly earlier date is the use of iota adscript. I don’t mean iota subscripts in the Phlegon manuscript — that’s 9th century CE — but in the acrostics: the second acrostic depends on iota adscript for its first word, ἵππωι.

That still isn’t conclusive, but it does create a weak presumption in favour of a pre-83 BCE date. Prior to 200 BCE, extant papyri are consistent about including the iota in ωι, ηι, and ᾱι; later, they start to be irregular. So Phlegon’s quotation looks like something dating to the 3rd or 2nd century BCE.

The evidence is compatible with a post-83 BCE date, but I don’t see an orthographic or metrical reason to prefer a post-83 BCE date. For the record I’d quite like to assign a later date! But the evidence isn’t enough to overturn Phlegon’s statement that the quotations were used in 125 BCE.

References

• Cardauns, B. 1976. M. Terentius Varro. Antiquitates rerum divinarum. Teil I: die Fragmente. Wiesbaden.
• Diels, H. 1890. Sibyllinische Blätter. Berlin. [Internet Archive]
• Hansen, W. 1996. Phlegon of Tralles’ Book of marvels. Exeter,
• McInerney, J. 2016. ‘Phlegon of Tralles (257).’ In: Worthington, I. (ed.) New Jacoby. BNJ 257.
• Parke, H. W. 1988. Sibyls and sibylline prophecy in classical antiquity. London/New York.
• Slings, S. R. 1993. ‘Hermesianax and the Tattoo Elegy (P.Brux. inv. E 8934 and P.Sorb. inv. 2254).’ Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 98: 29-37. [JSTOR]