Cumaean Sibyl

The Apolline prophetess of Cumae, whose cave was cut into the tufa cliff beneath the acropolis of the city on the northern edge of the Bay of Naples. Virgil *Aeneid* 6.36 names her Deiphobe daughter of Glaucus; Varro (*Divine Antiquities* fr. ap. Lact. *Inst.* 1.6.7–12) catalogues ten Sibyls of Greek and Italic tradition, of whom the Cumaean is the most authoritative for Roman cult. In the Aeneid she prophesies the Italian wars to come in the frenzy of divine possession (6.42–101) and guides Aeneas down to the underworld with the golden bough from the grove at Lake Avernus to meet his father Anchises (6.124–901). In the Roman historical tradition she was the prophetess who came to Tarquin Superbus with nine books of oracles, burned six when he refused her price, and sold him the remaining three at the original price of nine — the Sibylline Books kept thereafter in the Capitoline temple of Jupiter and consulted at moments of Roman state crisis until the temple burned in 83 BC. Her own death was a Hellenistic topos (Ovid *Met.* 14.101–153; Petronius *Sat.* 48.8): granted long life without eternal youth, she withered to the size of a cricket and at last only her voice remained, hanging in a jar at Cumae and whispering 'I want to die.'

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