Sibyls and Sibylline oracles. 3. The Sibylline oracles

1. Sibyls | 2. Sibylline books | 3. Sibylline oracles | 4. The Renaissance

As we saw in Part 2, some fragments of the Sibylline books were in public circulation in pagan Rome. Cicero and Dionysios of Halikarnassos accurately describe some aspects of the surviving fragments. There were also imitators.

Vergil at work: illustration before Eclogue 4 in cod. Vat. lat. 3867, fol. 9r (image source: Vatican Library)

Vergil’s fourth Eclogue is a relatively loose example. It’s framed as a ‘prophecy’ linked to the Cumaean Sibyl, though it doesn’t try to replicate the style or imagery of the Sibylline books. Vergil doesn’t give instructions for rituals, and there are no acrostics: as Parke puts it, it’s ‘a transposition of Sibylline motifs into a pastoral key’. Vergil foretells a glorious future golden age surrounding a child who is to be born in the consulship of Asinius Pollio (40 BCE). It’s hard to avoid thinking that aspect could be partly inspired by the childbirth in the start of Phlegon’s first quotation from the Sibylline books.

Parke 1988: 145. Pollio’s consulship: Eclogue 4.3, 4.11–12. Birth of a male child: 4.8 onwards. Acrostics: a few Vergil scholars have noted that the first letters of Eclogue 4.47–52 spell out cacata ‘shitty’, but virtually all regard it as an accident. If Vergil had really wanted to do an acrostic, he was perfectly capable of doing something comparable to the Sibylline books, rather than putting an isolated word of doubtful implication at a random point in mid-poem.

The Sibylline oracles are closer imitations. This a group of eleven poems and eight fragments, mostly Jewish, with an assortment of Christian additions, in Greek hexameter verse. They range in date from the 2nd century BCE to the 7th century CE. Several of the poems list off dynasties of kings and emperors, framing them as though they’re predictions. In some poems the timeline reaches all the way from the Creation (as in Genesis) up to the end times and the Last Judgement (as in Enoch or Revelation).

A sample

Here’s an excerpt: Sibylline oracles 4, lines 125–139, about various disasters ‘predicted’ to occur in the 1st century CE (trans. John Collins).

(125) A leader of Rome will come to Syria who will burn
the Temple of Jerusalem with fire, at the same time slaughter
many men and destroy the great land of the Jews with its broad roads.
Then indeed an earthquake will destroy at once Salamis and Paphos
when the dark water overwhelms Cyprus, which is washed by many waves.

(130) But when a firebrand, turned away from a cleft in the earth
in the land of Italy, reaches to broad heaven,
it will burn many cities and destroy men.
Much smoking ashes will fill the great sky,
and showers will fall from heaven like red earth.
(135) Know then the wrath of the heavenly God,
because they will destroy the blameless tribe of the pious.
Then the strife of war being aroused will come to the west,
and the fugitive from Rome will also come, brandishing a great spear,
having crossed the Euphrates with many myriads.

This covers Titus’ assault and the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE; an earthquake on Cyprus; the eruption of Vesuvius in 79; and the coming of one of the various false Neros, coming westward with Parthian support (probably the one mentioned in Dion Cassius 66.19.3, who came west as far as the Euphrates at some point in 79–81).

After this point S.O. 4 stops predicting ‘history’ and moves on to the end times. The references above are detailed enough that the poem should be understood to have been written not long after 81 CE.

Opening of Sibylline oracles 1 in the edition of Geffcken (1902: 6)

How many poems?

Yes yes, I know, lots of online sources say ‘fourteen’. They’re wrong. Modern editions assign the poems numbers up to 14. But the total number of poems is eleven, twelve, thirteen, or fifteen, depending on how you count — fourteen is the only count that’s definitely wrong.

The confusion is because the Oracles were transmitted in two overlapping collections.

The first collection, S.O. 1 to 8, has never been lost, and has been in print since the 1500s. Poems 1 and 2 are actually a single poem in two parts, but the first modern editor, Sixt Birck (a.k.a. Betuleius), decided to count them separately for no good reason, and unfortunately the numbering is now pretty much set in stone. There are indications that there was once a further poem in between S.O. 2 and 3 — the opening section of S.O. 3 is clearly from a separate poem —; also, as we’ll see below, that Lactantius had a copy of this collection, and that his copy had nine poems. So this collection can be counted as seven, eight, or nine poems.

The second collection was discovered in the 1800s. The first editor carried on the numbering from eight, and there are seven poems, so they’re numbers 9 to 15. But three of them — S.O. 9, 10, and 15 — duplicate material from the first collection. So modern editions only ever print the new ones, poems 11 to 14. (Poem 12 is a continuation of poem 11, but they were composed at different times and should be counted separately.)

So the full modern collection is S.O. 1/2; a missing poem of which fragments survive; S.O. 3 to 8; and 11 to 14. Eleven poems — or twelve if you count S.O. 1/2 as two, or thirteen if you add S.O. 3.1–92 to the count, or fifteen if you count the duplications in the second collection. Between them, they come to over 4,000 lines of hexameter.

You’re right to be confused. Some recent commentaries on Sibylline oracles 1/2 and 3 assume you’re already familiar with at least parts of this. It’s explained in the introduction to the standard critical edition, by Johannes Geffcken, but if you can’t read Geffcken’s German, things are going to be bewildering. A much friendlier guide is one given by John Collins in The Old Testament pseudepigrapha, volume 1. Collins gives an excellent introduction to each poem; a full English translation; and detailed notes. At the time of writing, Collins’ translation is the only good English translation of the Oracles.

Critical edition: Geffcken 1902. English edition: Collins 1983. Commentary on S.O. 1/2: Lightfoot 2007. Commentary on S.O. 3: Buitenwerf 2003. On the opening section of S.O. 3 a fragment from a separate poem, see Buitenwerf 2003: 79–94; Collins 1983: 359–360. (Note that Buitenwerf and Collins have opposing views on the status of S.O. frs. 1–3 and their relation to S.O. 3).

The contents of the Oracles

Here’s an overview. The dates are those assigned by Collins (but note that some of the dates aren’t universally agreed).

First collection (φ and ψ manuscript groups; first ed. Betuleius, 1545):

Poem	Date	Origin and contents
1/2	before 150 CE	Phrygian Jewish original. Timeline from Creation to Last Judgement; some phases removed and replaced by a Christian section on Christ and the fall of Jerusalem (1.323–400).
3.1–92	in phases, II BCE–I CE?	Fragment. Jewish (with Christian elements?). Hymn to God; rule of Rome; destruction of Temple; return of Nero, called ‘Beliar’. (93–96 = a further fragment.)
3.97–829	II BCE	Egyptian Jewish. Miscellany: Tower of Babel, Titanomachy, Exodus, Exile, oracles against foreign nations, ethics, eschatology.
4	late I CE	Jewish. Timeline of empires from Assyrian empire to fall of Jerusalem (600s BCE to 70 CE); end times.
5	late I CE	Egyptian Jewish. Timeline, 30 BCE–70 CE: fall of Ptolemies to fall of Jerusalem.
6	unclear	Christian. Short hymn (28 lines).
7	II–III CE	Christian. Historical snippets; the Flood; coming of Christ; end times.
8	II–III CE	Jewish (1–216) and Christian (217–428) sections. Religious perspective on world history. Christian acrostic at 217–250.

Second collection (Ω manuscript group; first ed. Mai, 1825):

Poem	Date	Origin and contents
9		Duplicate: = S.O. 6.1–28 + 7.1 + 8.218–428.
10		Duplicate: = S.O. 4.
11	early I CE?	Jewish. Timeline from the Flood up to the death of Cleopatra (to 30 BCE).
12	ca. 235 CE	Jewish; later continuation of S.O. 11. Some duplication: S.O. 12.1–11 = S.O. 5.1–11. Timeline, 30 BCE–235 CE, Augustus to Alexander Severus.
13	ca. 265 CE	Jewish (with one Christian line added). Historical: ca. 240–265 CE, new Palmyrene kingdom under Odaenathus, and Parthians under Mareades.
14	VII CE	Alexandrian Jewish. Jumble of references: later Roman emperors, Egypt, Rashidun conquest of Syria/Egypt.
15		Duplicate: = S.O. 8.1–9.

Why ‘Sibylline’?

These poems weren’t designed for a pre-existing collection of Sibylline material: they were composed separately from one another, over a period of centuries. So why do we refer to them as ‘sibylline’? Three reasons.

First: at the end of S.O. 3, the narrator explicitly claims to be one (or two) of the Sibyls. Lines 809–818 (trans. Collins, my emphasis):

(I say) these things to you, having left
(810) the long Babylonian walls of Assyria, frenzied, a fire sent to Greece,
prophesying the disclosures of God to all mortals,
so that I prophesy divine riddles to men.
Throughout Greece mortals will say that I am of another country,
a shameless one, born of Erythrae. Some will say that
(815) I am Sibylla born of Circe as mother and Gnostos as father,
a crazy liar. But when everything comes to pass,
then you will remember me and no longer will anyone
say that I am crazy, I who am a prophetess of the great God.

This doubles up as a claim to be both the Chaldaian Sibyl (from Babylon) and the Erythraian Sibyl. When ancient Christian writers quote from this poem, they ascribe it to the Erythraian Sibyl.

Second: there’s an acrostic in S.O. 8.217–250, mostly duplicated in S.O. 9. The first letters of each line spell out

Ἰησοῦς Χρειστὸς θεοῦ υἱὸς σωτὴρ σταυρός

Jesus Chreist, Son of God, Saviour, Cross

Incidentally there’s nothing surprising about the spelling ‘Chreist’: Koine Greek in the 2nd century CE uses ει, η, or ι to represent the sound [i], swapping between them freely.

Unlike the acrostics in Phlegon’s quotation (see Part 2), this acrostic isn’t a hexameter. Still, acrostics are a feature that was known to be associated with the Sibylline books. S.O. 9 reproduces most of the acrostic: that poem duplicates parts of S.O. 6, 7, and 8. But weirdly, it omits the first line of the acrostic, the one that provides the ι of ‘Jesus’. The preceding line (= S.O. 7.1) starts with an ω, so the acrostic is definitely incomplete. This shows, first, that S.O. 9 is a secondary version; and second, it suggests the compiler of S.O. 9 was unaware that there was an acrostic there.

S.O. 9 duplicates material from S.O. 6, 7, and 8. In this damaged manuscript, cod. Vat. gr. 1120, fol. 348v, we see the transition between them: the end of S.O. 6; one line from S.O. 7; then S.O. 8 starting at the second line of the acrostic. This MS is the oldest extant copy of the second collection (14th century; Q in Geffcken’s sigla). (Base image: Vatican Library; my annotations)

Third: ancient testimony casts the poems as ‘sibylline’. Alexander Polyhistor (mid-1st century BCE) shows an acquaintance with the earliest poem, S.O. 3, when he refers to the Tower of Babel in connection with the Babylonian Flood myth and the Sibyl (FGrHist 273 F 79).

From around 100 CE onwards, Christian writers refer to the Sibyls as authors of prophetic visions, though not yet explicitly citing the poems that we know (Shepherd of Hermas 8). The earliest citations are to S.O. 3 — which is to be expected, since that’s the only poem that makes an explicit claim to be sibylline.

Possibly the earliest citation is in Justin Martyr. Around 155 CE he refers to a prophecy that the world will be dissolved in fire. This may be from multiple sources: Justin is probably mainly thinking of Stoic ekpyrosis, but he explicitly refers to Sibylla (or a Sibyl), as well as the legendary Zoroastrian figure Hystaspes.

A couple of decades later we start to get more clearcut citations, starting with Athenagoras (170s) and Tertullian (190s). They quote verbatim from S.O. 3, and explicitly cite ‘the Sibyl’.

Justin, First apology 20, possibly alluding to S.O. 3.53–54. Athenagoras, Plea for the Christians 30; Tertullian, To the nations 2.12, both quoting S.O. 3.108–113 (in Latin in Tertullian’s case). For fuller documentation of ancient Christian citations of the Sibyls and the Sibylline oracles, see Parke 1988: 152–173.

But Lactantius is the most influential case. His works contain around 40 quotations from Sibylline oracles 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. And one passage has an especially condensed cluster of sibylline references. In Divine institutes 1.6, Lactantius

• (1.6.7–12) reports Varro’s canon of ten Sibyls (see Part 1);
• (1.6.10–11) tells the fable of how the Sibylline books were sold to king Tarquin (see Part 2);
• (1.6.13) claims that each of the poems was written by one of Varro’s Sibyls, except that there is no poem by the Cumaean Sibyl because the Romans keep her books secret;
• (1.6.13) paraphrases S.O. 3.808–813;
• (1.6.15) quotes the Greek text of S.O. fr. 1.7, fr. 3.3–5, and fr. 1.15–16, apparently implying that they are also from the Erythraian Sibyl (i.e. they were originally part of S.O. 3);
• (1.6.16) quotes S.O. 8.377, stating that it’s from a separate poem.

From this, we know Lactantius’ copy contained nine poems: he attributes the poems he knows to the Sibyls in Varro’s canon of ten, except for the Cumaean Sibyl. We also know it contained S.O. 3 through 8, so if it wasn’t an exemplar of the first collection described above, it was closely related to it. So it seems likely that Lactantius’ copy consisted of S.O. 1 to 8 (that is, seven poems) plus two further lost poems; that it had a fuller text of S.O. 3; and that one of the extra poems in his copy was the source of the fragment in S.O. 3.1–92.

See note above on the relation of fragments 1–3 to S.O. 3. Collins thinks fragments 1–3 come from a poem that once existed between S.O. 2 and 3, Buitenwerf things they come from S.O. 3: it depends on how you read the phrasing when Lactantius quotes from them. Collins thinks Lactantius may also have known S.O. 2, and that Div. inst. 7.15.10 paraphrases S.O. 2.21–22.

So Lactantius is the most powerful and direct reason that the collections came to be known as ‘sibylline’.

He’s also the first victim of a clump of misperceptions that have affected many people since then. The idea that the Sibylline oracles poems are genuinely related to Varro’s Sibyls; the idea that they’re derived from or related to the Roman Sibylline books. That confusion sets the tone for a lot of what we’ll see in Part 4, on developments in the Renaissance.

In recent scholarship, though — or most of it — it’s understood that the links between these things are only apparent links. The Sibylline oracles are first and foremost Jewish-Christian apocalyptic literature. They draw some motifs from pagan sibylline traditions, but their roots lie much more in 3rd–2nd century BCE Jewish apocalyptic literature, like Daniel and Enoch, than in the Roman Sibylline books.

References

• Buitenwerf, R. 2003. Book III of the Sibylline oracles and its social setting. Leiden.
• Collins, J. J. 1983. ‘Sibylline oracles.’ In: Charlesworth, J. H. (ed.) The Old Testament pseudepigrapha, vol. 1. New York. 317–472. [Internet Archive]
• Geffcken, J. 1902. Die Oracula Sibyllina. Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller. Leipzig. [Internet Archive]
• Lightfoot, J. L. 2007. The Sibylline oracles. With introduction, translation, and commentary on the first and second books. Oxford.
• Parke, H. W. 1988. Sibyls and sibylline prophecy in classical antiquity. London/New York.