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"You shall have your wish,
and with my guidance you shall see the dwellings of
Elysium and the latest kingdom of the universe; and
you shall see your dear father's shade."
[The Sibyl to
Aeneas. Ovid,
Metamorphoses
14.110]
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The Sibyl from Cumae was the guide of
Aeneas when he descended
to the Underworld.
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City of Cumae
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When Aeneas departed
from Carthage, leaving in despair Queen
Dido, with whom he had been
amorously involved, he returned to Drepanum in
Sicily, and thence he crossed to Italy,
disembarking at Cumae on the coast of Campania in
southern Italy, which was (or would become, as
History says) an Euboean colony.
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The sanctuary of
Apollo
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Here could be seen, surrounded by a grove
dedicated to Artemis,
the shrine of Apollo, and
a deeply-recessed cave on the flank of a hill,
where the Sibyl, inspired by the god of prophecy,
heard the hundreds of voices that she turned into
oracular answers. This temple, says the poet
Publius Vergilius Maro, was built by the great
craftsman and architect
Daedalus, when he came
to earth for the first time, having escaped from
Minos 2 flying with the
wings that his genius had conceived. To this
temple, which Daedalus
had adorned with sculptures and reliefs depicting
Cretan events, came
Aeneas with some of his
friends, while the rest of his men organized the
camp.
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The Sibyl names the price
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The Sibyl, on receiving the visitors, wasted no
time, and told them right away what those in charge
of this kind of office usually say (though words
vary):
"Just now, you
would do best to sacrifice seven bullocks."
[The Sibyl to Aeneas.
Virgil,
Aeneid
6.38]
For they wish to make sure that all understand
from the beginning that there is no receiving
without giving, whether the matter is worldly or
divine.
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Aeneas prays to the
god
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When Aeneas had
performed the rites, she guided them first into the
temple and then to the threshold of the cave on the
flank of the Cumaean hill. There the Sibyl was
overwhelmed by ecstasy, and the god demanded,
through her, vows and prayers.
It is here that Aeneas
solemnly addressed his wishes to
Apollo, asking for the
kingdom that destiny had promised. And if
permission for him to settle in Latium were granted
by the god, he would build a magnificent temple of
marble to Apollo and to
his sweet sister, and would appoint festival days
in his honour, and would collect all oracles
uttered by the god, to be kept for all times to
come.
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The Sibyl's ecstasy
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In the meantime, the Sibyl, with wild hair,
breast heaving, and foaming mouth, still attempted
to shake from her soul the god who rode her; but he
mastered her crazy heart, and when she had
submitted, all doors opened, and she delivered the
oracle, saying in her response that
Aeneas and his Trojans
would conquer Lavinium, but that dreadful wars
would come upon them; that they should be resisted
by a man Turnus, whom she called a new
Achilles, and that they
should never be rid of the wrath of
Hera. Nevertheless, she
encouraged him to never give way, and face all
evils boldly and by whatever means that luck might
allow.
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Disappointed consultant
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The performance of the possessed Sibyl was
impressive, but when her ecstasy had ebbed and she
became silent, she had to endure the complaints of
the consultant, who (and this too happens often)
now felt he had not received enough for his
sacrifices, gifts, and prayers:
"Maiden, there
is nothing new or unexpected to me in such trials
you prophesy. All of them I have forecast, worked
out in my mind already."
[Aeneas to The Sibyl.
Virgil,
Aeneid
6.97]
Aeneas could have said
the same thing in whatever instance; for learning
coming from without seems at times to have been
dwelling within from the beginning.
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Aeneas' wish
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In any case, Aeneas,
being disappointed or feigning disappointment, now
presented a bolder request: to be guided down into
the Underworld, since
this very cave at Cumae was reputed to be one of
its gateways, and he wished much to go into his
father's presence, who had died at port Drepanum in
Sicily, where he was buried before
Aeneas sailed to
Carthage.
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In the name of his father
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And to soften the Sibyl's heart so that she
would assent, Aeneas
evoked his ever remembered gestures of piety and
courage, telling how he had saved his beloved
father through the flames of burning
Troy, and how he had
rescued him bearing him away on his shoulders,
adding that Anchises 1
himself, while still in this world, had bidden him
several times to visit her and make this very
appeal. So he said with his hands upon the altar:
"I pray you,
kind one, take pity on father and son."
[Aeneas to The Sibyl.
Virgil,
Aeneid
6.116]
... while recalling all those who, like
Orpheus, or like
Theseus, or like
Heracles 1, or like
Polydeuces—who comes and goes sharing death
and immortality with his brother Castor 1—had
descended before him.
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The Sibyl accepts
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The Sibyl answered this prayers thus:
"... the way
to Hades is easy; night and day lie open
the gates of death's dark kingdom: but to retrace
your steps, to find the way back to
daylight—that is the task ..." [The
Sibyl to Aeneas. Virgil,
Aeneid
6.125]
... but moved by
Aeneas' words, she did
not refuse, and instead gave him instructions as to
what to do first: to give burial to one of his dead
comrades, and to get The Golden Bough, sacred to
Persephone, the sweet
lady of the dead.
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The Golden Bough
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This bough, with leaves and stem of gold, was
hidden in the woods and shadowed by the walls of a
small dell. It had to be plucked from the tree (for
no one enters the
Underworld without
it), and brought as a tribute to
Persephone. And it is
said that when a bough is torn away, another grows
in its place, with the same leaves and stem of
gold. And he who finds it may pull it out easily,
if he is fated to descend; otherwise no sword nor
any amount of force can hew it away.
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Who may descend to the
Underworld
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Now, it is said that those who descend to the
Underworld and come
back to the light, can do so either on account of
Zeus' love, or on account
of their own goodness, or because they are born
from gods. The last case could be that of
Orpheus, who was the son
of a deity, as were
Heracles 1 and
Theseus, and also
Polydeuces, who comes and goes. But in the case of
Odysseus, who was not
the son of a deity, and nevertheless descended to
Hades and returned,
the love of Zeus might be
assumed, although his goodness is diversely judged
by different men. Nothing can be said, in this
context, of Pirithous,
who having conceived the extraordinary idea of
seducing Persephone,
descended to the
Underworld; for it is
not sure whether he ever returned.
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His mother's birds
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Now Aeneas was the son
of a delightful goddess, and she, being protective
of her child, sent her birds—two doves—to
show him the way by settling on the tree where The
Golden Bough gleamed. And since
Aeneas was fated to
descend, he, on seeing it, broke it off with one
single pull and brought it to the Sibyl.
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Sacrifices
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Near the entrance of a deep cave, the priestess
made sacrifices and poured libations, as she called
upon Hecate, known to be
powerful both above and below, while
Aeneas sacrificed to
Nyx,
Gaia, and
Persephone, and set
up altars to Hades by
night.
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Hecate opens
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But it was not before dawn that the ground
rumbled, the ridges quaked, and the dogs howled as
Hecate approached to open
the way. Then the Sibyl ordered the uninitiated to
leave and clear the whole grove, and asked
Aeneas to draw his sword
and come forth. And before plunging into the opened
cave mouth, she said to
Aeneas:
"Now you need
all your courage, now your stout heart."
[The Sibyl to
Aeneas. Virgil,
Aeneid
6.261]
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The Sibyl explains visions
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This is how the
Underworld opened for
Aeneas and the Sibyl, who
walked past many strange and yet so well known
creatures; for such are
Hypnos, or
Thanatos, or
Geras, whose acquaintance
all mortals make once in a while without going to
Hades. And the same
could be said of Diseases, or Hunger, or
Eris, or Grief. But when
Aeneas saw the Hydra, the
Chimera, the GORGONS, and the HARPIES, he draw his
sword against them, and would have attacked them,
had not the Sibyl explained that these were
incorporeal existences, forms without substance,
empty shades.
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Charon
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Following the road that leads to the river
Acheron, they saw the filthy ferryman Charon
embarking on the Stygian marsh some groups of
souls, but letting others stay on the shore. When
Aeneas asked his guide
about the reason for such distinction, the Sibyl
replied that those who were left on the shore and
kept at a distance, were the helpless ones, the
unburied. For no one may be taken to the other bank
whose bones have not been laid to rest, unless one
hundred years have passed.
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Palinurus
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Among these unburied souls they found Palinurus,
the son of Iasus 4 and
Aeneas' steersman, who
having fallen asleep while watching the stars, was
hurled into the sea between Drepanum and Cumae. Now
Aeneas learned what had
happened to him; and when Palinurus asked for the
peace-bringing burial, the Sibyl comforted him,
saying that fate, which cannot be swerved by
prayer, should bring about portents compelling
neighbouring peoples to give him burial.
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The Golden Bough disclosed
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Next the ferryman Charon, seeing a man carrying
a weapon, wished to stop them. But then the Sibyl
disclosed The Golden Bough, which she had hidden in
her robe, and Charon took them on board. On the
other bank, the Sibyl calmed the monstrous hound of
Hades with a cake of honey
and wheat infused with sedative drugs.
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Landscapes of
Hades
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Having thus neutralized Cerberus 1, they entered
Hades, where
different souls receive their different dues in
appropriate landscapes. For those who died in
childhood are not in the same places as those who
were condemned to death on a false charge, and
every place is duly allotted as judgement is given.
And those who killed themselves are in one place;
and those who let themselves be tortured by love's
disease (as Dido, who was
in love with Aeneas to
the point of insanity) are in another. Now
Dido also killed herself,
some may rightly argue; yet she loathed life
because of her love's disease, and not because of
life itself. And those who became famous in war
have their own place, where they, keeping the
wounds and mutilations that killed them, can still
feel fear and rancour, and pray for revenge. For
this is a joyless and sunless abode.
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Wasting time
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Seeing himself reflected in the fate of his
Trojan comrades, Aeneas
wasted much of the allotted time, indulging in pity
and self-pity with his old friends, until the Sibyl
called him to his senses:
"Night is
coming,
Aeneas; yet we spend the hours in
weeping." [The Sibyl to
Aeneas. Virgil,
Aeneid
6.261]
... leading him away from Tartarus, where
criminals are punished, to Elysium.
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The Sibyl describes Tartarus
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No righteous soul, the Sibyl explained to
Aeneas (for
Hecate had instructed
her), may tread the threshold of Tartarus where
Rhadamanthys rules, chastising criminals and
forcing confessions, with the help of Tisiphone 1's
whip, from all those who hated their own brothers,
or who struck their parents, or who entangled
clients in fraud, or who joined their wealth to
their solitude giving nothing to others (these are
the majority, says the Sibyl), or who died
adulterous, or who gave themselves to treason, or
who yielded to a tyrant lord, or who let themselves
be bribed corrupting the laws. These (and others)
are punished by the heavy ways of heaven, including
Theseus, who sits
eternally on a chair, or so the Sibyl said. And
having grown weary of her long list of evils she
abbreviated:
"No, not if I
had a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths, and voice
of iron, could I describe all the forms of crime,
or rehearse all the tale of torments." [The
Sibyl to Aeneas. Virgil,
Aeneid
6.625]
This she said while they approached the Palace
of Hades, in whose doorway
Aeneas placed The Golden
Bough for Persephone.
And when this was done, they went on into Elysium,
the abode of the fortunate, a happy land for the
blessed with bright air, and a dazzling light
coming from a sun and stars of its own.
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Elysium
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There the Sibyl asked for
Anchises 1, whom they
soon found in a green valley,
Aeneas tried several
times to put his arms round his father's neck; but
souls beneath the earth, whether they are in the
dark depths of Hades
or in the midst of Elysium's light slip any embrace
and withdraw. Nevertheless,
Aeneas learned many
things from his father's conversation about life
and death, and past and future, and the nature of
all things. And when the time came for the visitors
to return, Anchises 1
escorted them as far as the ivory gate (which is,
of the two gates of Sleep, the one through which
pass the false dreams that the shades of the
Underworld impose
upon mortals), and sent them back through it.
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Aeneas' gratitude
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And as they were walking along their road to the
light, said Aeneas to the
Sibyl:
"Whether you
are a goddess in very truth, or a maid most
pleasing to the gods, to me you will always seem
divine, and I shall confess that I owe my life to
you, through whose will I have approached the world
of death, have seen and have escaped in safety from
that world. And for these services, when I have
returned to the upper regions, I will erect a
temple to you and there burn incense in your
honour." [Aeneas
to the Sibyl. Ovid,
Metamorphoses
14.123]
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The Sibyl and Apollo
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This Sibyl was not a goddess, although she was
seven hundred years old when
Aeneas met her. But
Apollo (she said) offered
her endless life if she consented to the god's
love. And she, as if accepting his gift, pointed to
a heap of sand, and prayed that she might have as
many years of life as there were sand-grains in the
pile. However, she forgot
Youth, without which
immortality is worthless, so the god, hoping that
she would yield to his love, promised endless youth
as well; but she, having spurned the god's gift,
was fated to became the prey of a long
Old Age. For the amount of
sand-grains were one thousand.
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Additional notes
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Cumae
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Cumae has been regarded as the oldest of Italian
cities, and as they say, was founded by colonists
from Cyme and Chalcis in Euboea (the island off the
eastern coast of Boeotia and Locris). The
Phlegraean plain close to Cumae, was as prosperous
as the city itself, and some have said that it is
here that the
Gigantomachy took
place. Near Cumae is Cape Misenum, named either
after Misenus 1, the man whom
Aeneas must bury before
descending to Hades,
or after Misenus 2, a companion of
Odysseus. Some have
believed, in the course of time, that it was here
that Odysseus descended
to Hades, or that he
at least visited the oracle of the dead that was in
Cumae. Birds flying the adjacent Gulf Avernus, were
believed to fall down killed by the poisonous
vapours of the earth; so also Virgil:
"Above it no
winged creatures could ever wing their way with
impunity, so lethal was the miasma which went
fuming up from its black throat to the vault of
heaven: wherefore the Greeks called it Avernus, the
Birdless Place." [Virgil,
Aeneid
6.239]
Places with this kind of mephitic emanations are
called 'Plutonia'; and a Plutonium is regarded as
an entrance to the
Underworld (for a
description of the hot springs and Plutonium of
Hierapolis see Strabo, 13.4.14). The whole region
about Baiae and Cumae had
"... a foul
smell, because it is full of sulphur and fire and
hot waters." [Strabo,
Geography
5.4.6]
The people of Cumae were called Opici, and they
affirmed that the boar's tusks dedicated in their
sanctuary of Apollo had
belonged to the Erymanthian boar, which
Heracles 1 trapped and
brought to Mycenae when
performing one of his
LABOURS
[Pau.8.24.5]
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Sibyls in mythical times
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Sibyl 1.
Sibyl is a surname. The first woman to chant
oracles at Delphi was a
daughter of Zeus and Lamia
1, daughter of Poseidon
[Pau.10.12.1].
Sibyl 2.
After her came Herophile, known for having said
that Helen would be the
ruin of both Asia and Europe. She was daughter of
Theodorus, a shepherd from Cilicia (Asia Minor) and
a nymph (Nymph 11). That is why she chanted:
"I am by birth
half mortal, half divine;
An immortal nymph was my mother, my father an eater
of corn;
On my mother's side of Idaean birth, but my
fatherland was red
Marpessus, sacred to the Mother, and the river
Aidoneus."
She was at first attendant of the temple of
Apollo Smintheus
('Mouse-god'); there were two temples on
Apollo Sminthian: one in
Tenedos—the island off the coast of the
Troad—and one in Chrysa, near Mount Ida in the
plain of Thebe), and although she lived most of his
life in Samos (the Aegean island off the western
coast of Asia Minor), she is known to have visited
Colophon, Delos, and
Delphi, where she sang
her chants standing on a rock. She died in the
Troad, and upon her tomb-stone in the grove of the
Sminthian it was written:
"Here I am,
the plain-speaking Sibyl of Phoebus,
Hidden beneath this stone tomb.
A maiden once gifted with voice, but now for ever
voiceless,
By hard fate doomed to this fetter.
But I am buried near the nymphs and this
Hermes,
Enjoying in the world below a part of the kingdom I
had then."
This is the Sibyl that was also called
Erythraean.
[Pau.10.12.1-2, 10.12.6-7].
Sibyl 3.
Pausanias says, following the account of the
historian Hyperochus of Cumae, that the next woman
to give oracles, was Demo 1 from Cumae, although no
oracle given by her was preserved. A stone urn in
the sanctuary of Apollo
kept her bones. She could have been the Sibyl that
led Aeneas [Pau.10.12.8].
Sibyl 4.
Then Pausanias mentions Sabbe, a seeress who grew
up among the Hebrews in Palestine, though some call
her Babylonian and others Egyptian. She was
daughter of Berosus and Erymanthe [Pau.10.12.9].
Sibyl 5.
Another Sibyl, called Samian or Cymaean, has been
mentioned [Hyg.Fab.128].
Erythrae in Ionia is a
city opposite the island of Chios. According to
Strabo 9.2.12 it was a colony of Boeotian Erythrae.
Strabo says that the Ionian Erythrae was the native
city of Sibylla and later of Athenais, two women
who had the gift of prophecy [14.1.34].
Isidore de Seville describes ten Sibyls in his
Etymologies.
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