Explanation.

The early fathers of the church, and particularly Justin, in their works in defence of Christianity, made use of the Sibylline verses of the ancients. The Emperor Constantine, too, in his harangue before the Nicene Council, quoted them, as redounding to the advantage of Christianity; although he then stated that many persons did not believe that the Sibyls were the authors of them. St. Augustin, too, employs several of their alleged predictions to enforce the truths of the Christian religion.

Sebastian Castalio has warmly maintained the truth of the oracles contained in these verses, though he admits that they have been very much interpolated. Other writers, however, having carefully examined them, have pronounced them to be spurious, and so many pious frauds; which, perhaps, may be pronounced to be the general opinion at the present day. We will, however, shortly enquire how many Sibyls of antiquity there were, and when they lived; whether any of their works were ever promulgated for the perusal of the public, and whether the verses which still exist under their name have any ground to be considered genuine.

There is no doubt but that in ancient times there existed certain women, who, led by a frenzied enthusiasm, uttered obscure sentences, which passed for predictions with the credulous people who went to consult them. Virgil and Ovid represent Æneas as going to the cave of the Cumæan Sibyl, to learn from her the success of the wars he should be engaged in. Plato, Strabo, Plutarch, Pliny, Solinus, and Pausanias, with many other writers, have mentioned the Sibyls; and it would be absurd, with Faustus Socinus, to affirm that no Sibyls ever existed. Indeed, Plato and other authors of antiquity go so far as to say, that by their productions they were essentially the benefactors of mankind. Some mention but one Sibyl, who was born either at Babylon or at Erythræ, in Phrygia. Diodorus Siculus mentions one only, and assigns Delphi as her locality, calling her by the name of Daphne. Strabo and Stephanus Byzantinus mention two, the one of Gergæ, a little town near Troy, and the other of Mermessus, in the same country. Solinus reckons three; the Delphian, named Herophile, the Erythræan, and the Cumæan. According to Varro, their number amounted to ten, whose names, in the order of time which Pausanias assigns them, were as follows:

The first and the most ancient was the Delphian, who lived before the Trojan war. The second was the Erythræan, who was said to have been the first composer of acrostic verses, and who also lived before the Trojan war. The third was the Cumæan, who was mentioned by Nævius in his book on the first Punic war, and by Piso in his annals. She is the Sibyl spoken of in the Æneid, and her name was Deïphobe. The fourth was the Samian, called Pitho, though Eusebius calls her Herophile, and he makes her to have lived about the time of Numa Pompilius. The fifth, whose name was Amalthea, or Demophile, lived at Cumæ, in Asia Minor. The sixth was the Hellespontine Sibyl, born at Mermessus, near Troy. The seventh was the Libyan, mentioned by Euripides. Some suppose that she was the first who had the name of Sibyl, which was given to her by the people of Africa. The eighth was the Persian or Babylonian Sibyl, whom Suidas names Sambetha. The ninth was the Phrygian, who delivered her oracles at Ancyra, in Phrygia. The tenth was the Tiburtine, who was called Albunea, and prophesied near Tibur, or Tivoli, on the banks of the Anio. In the present story Ovid evidently intends to represent these various Sibyls as being the same person; and to account for her prolonged existence, by representing that Apollo had granted her a life to last for many ages.

Several ages before the Christian era, the Romans had a collection of verses, which were commonly attributed to the Sibyls. These they often consulted; and in the time of Tarquinius Superbus, two officers were appointed for the purpose of keeping the Sibylline books, whose business it was to look in them on the occasion of any public calamity, in order to see whether it had been foretold and to make their report to the Senate. The books were kept in a stone chest, beneath the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. These Duumvirs continued until the year of Rome 388, when eight others being added, they formed the College of the Decemvirs. About eighty-three years before the Christian era five other keepers of these books were added, who thus formed the body called the Quindecimvirs.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Aulus Gellius, Servius, and many other writers, state the following as the origin of the Sibylline books. An aged woman presented to Tarquinius Superbus three books that contained the oracles of the Sibyls, and demanded a large sum for them. The king refusing to buy them, she went and burned them; and returning, asked the same price for the remaining six, as she had done for the original number. Being again repulsed, she burnt three more, and coming back again, demanded the original price for the three that remained. Astonished at the circumstance, the king bought the books. Pliny and Solinus vary the story a little, in saying that the woman at first presented but three books, and that she destroyed two of them.

It is generally supposed, that on the burning of the Capitol, about eighty-three years before the Christian era, the Sibylline books of Tarquinius Superbus were destroyed in the flames. To repair the loss, the Romans despatched officers to various cities of Italy, and even to Asia and Africa, to collect whatever they could find, under the name of Sibylline oracles. P. Gabinius, M. Ottacilius, and L. Valerius brought back a large collection, of which the greater part was rejected, and the rest committed to the care of the Quindecimvirs. Augustus ordered a second revision of them; and, after a severe scrutiny, those which were deemed to be genuine, were deposited in a box, under a statue of Apollo Palatinus. Tiberius again had them examined, and some portion of them was then rejected. Finally, about the year A.D. 399, Stilcho, according to Rutilius Numatianus, or rather, the Emperor Honorius himself, ordered them to be burnt.

The so-called collection of Sibylline verses which now exists is generally looked upon as spurious; or if any part is genuine, it bears so small a proportion to the fictitious portion, that it has shared in the condemnation. Indeed, their very distinctness stamps them as forgeries; for they speak of the mysteries of Christianity in undisguised language, and the names of our Saviour and the Virgin Mary occur as openly as they do in the Holy Scriptures.

It is a singular assertion of St. Jerome, that the gift of prophecy was a reward to the Sibyls for their chastity. If such was the condition, we have a right to consider that the Deities were very partial in the distribution of their rewards, and in withholding them from the multitudes who, we are bound in charity to believe, were as deserving as the Sibyls themselves of the gift of vaticination.

FABLE IV. [XIV.154-247]

Æneas arrives at Caieta, in Italy. Achæmenides, an Ithacan, who is on board his ship, meets his former companion Macareus there; and relates to him his escape from being devoured by Polyphemus. Macareus afterwards tells him how Ulysses had received winds from Æolus in a hide, and by that means had a prosperous voyage; till, on the bag being opened by the sailors in their curiosity, the winds rushed out, and raised a storm that drove them back to Æolia, and afterwards upon the coast of the Læstrygons.

While the Sibyl was relating such things as these, during the steep ascent, the Trojan Æneas emerged from the Stygian abodes to the Eubœan city,[15] and the sacrifice being performed, after the usual manner, he approached the shores that not yet bore the name of his nurse;[16] here, too, Macareus of Neritos, the companion of the experienced Ulysses, had rested, after the prolonged weariness of his toils. He recognized Achæmenides, once deserted in the midst of the crags of Ætna; and astonished that, thus unexpectedly found again, he was yet alive, he said, “What chance, or what God, Achæmenides, preserves thee? why is a barbarian[17] vessel carrying {thee}, a Greek? What land is sought by thy bark?”

No longer ragged in his clothing, {but} now his own {master},[18] and wearing clothes tacked together with no thorns, Achæmenides says, “Again may I behold Polyphemus, and those jaws streaming with human blood, if my home and Ithaca be more delightful to me than this bark; if I venerate Æneas any less than my own father. And, though I were to do everything {possible}, I could never be sufficiently grateful. ’Tis he that has caused that I speak, and breathe, and behold the heavens and the luminary of the sun; and can I be ungrateful, and forgetful of this? {’Tis through him} that this life of mine did not fall into the jaws of the Cyclop; and though I were, even now, to leave the light of life, I should either be buried in a tomb, or, at least, not in that paunch {of his}. What were my feelings at that moment (unless, indeed, terror deprived me of all sense and feeling), when, left behind, I saw you making for the open sea? I wished to shout aloud, but I was fearful of betraying myself to the enemy; the shouts of Ulysses were very nearly causing[19] the destruction of even your ship. I beheld him when, having torn up a mountain, he hurled the immense rock in the midst of the waves; again I beheld him hurling huge stones, with his giant arms, just as though impelled by the powers of the engine of war. And, forgetful that I was not in it, I was now struck with horror lest the waves or the stones might overwhelm the ship.

“But when your flight had saved you from a cruel death, he, indeed, roaring with rage, paced about all Ætna, and groped out the woods with his hands, and, deprived of his eye, stumbled against the rocks; and stretching out his arms, stained with gore, into the sea, he cursed the Grecian race, and he said, ‘Oh! that any accident would bring back Ulysses to me, or any one of his companions, against whom my anger might find vent, whose entrails I might devour, whose living limbs I might mangle with my right hand, whose blood might drench my throat, whose crushed members might quiver beneath my teeth: how insignificant, or how trifling, {then}, would be the loss of my sight, that has been taken from me!’ This, and more, he said in his rage. Ghastly horror took possession of me, as I beheld his features, streaming even yet with blood, and the ruthless hands, and the round space deprived of the eye, and his limbs, and his beard matted with human blood. Death was before my eyes, {and} yet that was the least of my woes. I imagined that[20] now he was about to seize hold of me, and that now he was on the very point of swallowing my vitals within his own; in my mind was fixed the impress of that time when I beheld two bodies of my companions three or four times dashed against the ground. Throwing himself on the top of them, just like a shaggy lion, he stowed away their entrails, their flesh, their bones with the white marrow, and their quivering limbs, in his ravenous paunch. A trembling seized me; in my alarm I stood without blood {in my features}, as I beheld him both chewing and belching out his bloody banquet from his mouth, and vomiting pieces mingled with wine; {and} I fancied that such a doom was in readiness for wretched me.

“Concealing myself for many a day, and trembling at every sound, and both fearing death and {yet} desirous to die, satisfying hunger with acorns, and with grass mixed with leaves, alone, destitute, desponding, abandoned to death and destruction, after a length of time, I beheld a ship not far off; by signs I prayed for deliverance, and I ran down to the shore; I prevailed; and a Trojan ship received me, a Greek. Do thou too, dearest of my companions, relate thy adventures, and those of thy chief, and of the company, which, together with thee, entrusted {themselves} to the ocean.”

The other relates how that Æolus rules over the Etrurian seas; Æolus, the grandson of Hippotas, who confines the winds in their prison, which the Dulichean chief had received, shut up in a leather {bag}, a wondrous gift; how, with a favouring breeze, he had proceeded for nine days, and had beheld the land he was bound for; {and how}, when the first morning after the ninth had arrived, his companions, influenced by envy and a desire for booty, supposing it to be gold, had cut the fastenings of the winds; {and how}, through these, the ship had gone back along the waves through which it had just come, and had returned to the harbour of the Æolian king.

“Thence,” said he, “we came to the ancient city[21] of Lamus, the Læstrygon. Antiphates was reigning in that land. I was sent to him, two in number accompanying me; and with difficulty was safety procured by me and one companion, by flight; the third of us stained the accursed jaws of the Læstrygon with his blood. Antiphates pursued us as we fled, and called together his followers; they flocked together, and, without intermission, they showered both stones and beams, and they overwhelmed men, and ships, too, did they overwhelm; yet one, which carried us and Ulysses himself, escaped. A part of our companions {thus} lost, grieving and lamenting much we arrived at those regions which thou perceivest afar hence. Look! afar hence thou mayst perceive an island,[22] that has been seen by me; and do thou, most righteous of the Trojans, thou son of a Goddess, (for, since the war is ended, thou art not, Æneas, to be called an enemy) I warn thee--avoid the shores of Circe.”

[Footnote 15: Eubœan city.--Ver. 155. ‘Cumæ’ was said to have been founded by a colony from Chalcis, in Eubœa.]

[Footnote 16: Of his nurse.--Ver. 157. Caieta was the name of the nurse of Æneas, who was said to have been buried there by him.]

[Footnote 17: Barbarian.--Ver. 163. That is, Trojan; to the Greeks all people but themselves were βαρβαροὶ.]

[Footnote 18: His own master.--Ver. 166. ‘Now his own master,’ in contradistinction to the time when Macareus looked on himself as the devoted victim of Polyphemus.]

[Footnote 19: Nearly causing.--Ver. 181. Homer, in the Ninth Book of the Odyssey, recounts how Ulysses, after having put out the eye of Polyphemus, fled to his own ship, and when the Giant followed, called out to him, disclosing his real name; whereas, he had before told the Cyclop that his name was οὔτις, ‘nobody.’ By this indiscreet action, the Cyclop was able to ascertain the locality of the ship, and nearly sank it with a mass of rock which he hurled in that direction.]

[Footnote 20: I imagined that.--Ver. 203-4. ‘Et jam prensurum, jam, jam mea viscera rebar In sua mersurum.’ Clarke thus renders these words; ‘And now I thought he would presently whip me up, and cram my bowels within his own.’]

[Footnote 21: The ancient city.--Ver. 233. This city was afterwards known as Formiæ, in Campania.]

[Footnote 22: An island.--Ver. 245. Macareus here points towards the promontory of Circæum, which was supposed to have formerly been an island.]