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| Michelangelo Drapery study for Erythraean Sibyl ca. 1508-1512 drawing British Museum |
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| Raphael Phrygian Sibyl ca. 1511 drawing (recto) British Museum |
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| Raphael Drapery study for Phrygian Sibyl ca. 1511 drawing (verso) British Museum |
SIBYL – One or other of certain women of antiquity who were reputed to possess powers of prophecy and divination. In later times, the number of these was usually set down as ten, flourishing at different times and places in Asia, Africa, Greece, and Italy.
The spirit of deepe prophecy she hath,
Exceeding the nine Sibyls of old Rome
– William Shakespeare (1591)
The Prophecies of the Sibyls . . .
made many Years after the Events they pretended to foretell
– Joseph Addison (1712)
Their industry had scooped the Sibyll's cave
into a prodigious mine
– Edward Gibbon (1788)
– citations from the Oxford English Dictionary
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| attributed to Giulio Romano Sibyl ca. 1525-30 drawing Prado, Madrid |
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| Pirro Ligorio Seated Sibyl and attendant Genius ca. 1540 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Daniele da Volterra Sibyl ca. 1540-45 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Pellegrino Tibaldi Sibyl ca. 1549 drawing British Museum |
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| Lorenzo Sabbatini Sibyl seated on clouds with tablet before 1576 drawing Royal Collection, Windsor |
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| attributed to Antonio Campi Sibyl reading before 1591 drawing Royal Collection, Windsor |
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| Annibale Carracci Study for Sibyl before 1605 drawing Royal Collection, Windsor |
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| Giulio Cesare Procaccini Study for Sibyl before 1625 drawing on blue paper British Museum |
SIBYLLAE – The name given in antiquity to inspired prophetesses of some deity, in particular Apollo. They were usually regarded as young maidens dwelling in lonely caves or by inspiring springs, who were possessed with a spirit of divination, and gave forth prophetic utterances while under the influence of enthusiastic frenzy. . . . Though Plato knew of only one, others mention two, three, four, and even ten or twelve. In the earliest times they are mentioned as dwelling in the neighborhood of the Trojan Ida in Asia Minor, later at Erythrae in Ionia, in Samos, at Delphi, and at Cumae in Italy. . . . The Sibylline Books, so often met with in Roman history, had their origin in a collection of oracular utterances in Greek hexameters, composed in the time of Solon and Cyrus at Gergis on Mount Ida, and ascribed to the Hellespontic Sibyl, buried in the temple of Apollo at Gergis. This collection was brought by way of Erythrae to Cumae, and finally, in the time of the last king, to Rome. According to the legend, the Cumaean Sibyl offered to Tarquinus Superbus nine books of prophecy; and as the king declined to purchase them, owing to the exorbitant price she demanded, burnt all but three of them, which the king purchased for the original price, and had them preserved in a vault beneath the Capitoline Temple of Jupiter. When they were destroyed in the burning of the Capitol in 88 BC, the Senate sent envoys to make a collection of similar oracular sayings distributed over various places, in particular Ilium, Erythrae, and Samos. This new collection was deposited in the restored temple, together with similar sayings of native origin; e.g. those of the Sibyl at Tibur, of the brothers Marcius, and others. From the Capitol they were transferred by Augustus as pontifex in 12 BC to the temple of Apollo on the Palatine, after they had been examined and copied; here they remained until about 405 AD. They are said to have been burnt by Stilicho. The use of these oracles was from the outset reserved for the State, and they were not consulted for the foretelling of future events, but on the occasion of remarkable calamities, such as pestilence, earthquake, and as a means of expiating portents. It was only the rites of expiation prescribed by the Sibylline books that were communicated to the public, and not the oracles themselves."
– Oskar Seyffert, from The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Religion, Literature, and Art, originally published in German in 1882, English translation published in 1891
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| Guercino Sibyl 1626 drawing Royal Collection, Windsor |
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| Guercino Sibyl ca. 1626-27 drawing Royal Collection, Windsor |
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| Guercino Sibyl holding scroll 1638 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |