But what is the Sibyl, a pagan figure, doing in this Christian connexion? How did she come to till so strange a role ? The answer to these ques- tions is the subject of the present article.
The etymology of the word ' Sibyl ' is a disputed point, (a) The oldest derivation is the attractive one given by Varro (iiuoted in Ijact. Div. Inst. i. 6), that the term is a generic title for prophetesses, which comes from the Doric or .^5oIic <7tos=: eeo?, and ^oAAa (fiov\Xa)= ^ov\rj, i.e. ' the counsel of God.' (b) J. P. Postgate(.4./y'/i iii. [18S2| 333-334), unable to accept (a), since <7toc is Laconian, not .'Eolic, and since the loss of an accented syllable is unlikely, prefers the roots cTt.^-v\o-ya. (the feminine Bufflx)=' the wise (little) woman,' the suffix -uAo being used in a diminutive sense, and trip- being connected with sap, 'to be wise.' (c) The idea of wisdom is brought in by those pliilologists, like Jlax Miiller (Lectures on the Science of Lan- guage, new ed., London, 1882, vol. i. p. 109), who connect o-t0 with a primitive Italian .faltus or sabiris, 'wise': but there is no trace of this Italian term as the origin of the diminutive, and ' Slbulla ' does not seem to occur in any Italian dialect, (d) E. Hofniann (see below) accepts the first part of (a), but makes the word a coni]>osite from aids and rAAao« = tAaos (i'Aewy), meaning 'God-appeasing,' or 'God-reconciling,' with reference to the aim of the primitive Sibylline oracles. Others find the thought of age dontinant, and (e), like S. Krauss, derive it from sib.it, ' the ancient of God,' sib orKr6='old,'and -jA as in Bafiv Aa»k, for which the inscriptions furnish the form * lid.h.\l' (Bi/zaiUi- nische Zeitschri/l, xi. [1902] I'22), or (/), like H. Lewy in I'luMogxts, Ivii. (1S9S1 360f., connect (ri'fli/AAo with the Seiiiitic (Aramaic) root of sdb^td, * grandtnother,' although this leaves the reduplication of the j9 unexplained. None of tliese, or of the other ancient and modern etymologies which have been proi)osed, is satisfactory. ii^tAAa occurs as a woman's name m an Attic inscription from the 4th cent. B.C., but, while this suggests that Sibvl may have been a proper name to begin with, it is insufficient to prove that Sibyl was a Greek term, not an Oriental. Eventually the name was apjilied to any woman of prophetic gifts, according to Servius (on jUn. iii.
445: 'Sibylla . . . dicitur oninis puella cuius pectus numen recipit ') and Suidas (iv't. oro^an at ffrtKtiat fidmtiti utl'OfJ.dadrf<iav TiifivWai). Hut originally it was restricted to a sniall class of prophetesses, whom we may call ;
1. The classical Sibyls).— Towards the end of the Glh, or aliout the beginning of the .Ith, cent. B.C., the foundation of the Capitoline tiMii[ile in Rome was associated with the influence of Sibylline! utterances ami the infusion of tireek rites (Grwrii.s ri7i(.v) into Konian religion. The origin of these was Eastern. Ouring the Glh cent. 'Greece was not only full of OridiiMu and Pythagoreanisni, but of floating oracular ilicta believed to emanate from a mystic female figure, a weird figure of whom it is hard to say how far she was human or divine ; and of whose origin we know nothing, except that her original home was, as we might expect, Asia Minor' {W. Wanle Fowler, The Jieligious Jixpcri- enrc iif the liumrin People, Londtju, 1911, p. 257). This was the Sibyl. Like the Pythia, she was a woman, considered to be inspired by Apollo. Subse<iuently, she was supposed to be extremely old, on the principle, probably, that long experience added to her prophetic capacities. As time went on, her per.sonality multijilied ; in the 4th cent. B.C. Heradides Ponticus, the historian, knew of three, and Varro reckoned as many as ten * Sibyls. Primitive tradition located the original Sibyl at Erythroe, but the most f:imous Sibyl resided at Cunue, the old (Jreek settlement in Campania, thougii it is probable that the Sibylline oracle.-> which came to Home from Cunue had reached the latter city from Erythra'.t The Koman collection, which legend linked to the reign of Tarquinius Superbus, perished in the Capitol fire of S3 B.C. But they had become too important for the purposes of religion to be lost, and a commis- sion of three State officials replaced them by a fresh collection of a thousand verses, gathered from Erythraj, Samos, Ilium, Africa, Sicily, and elsewhere. Instructions were given that only genuine productions were to be admitted to this new edition of the libri Sibtjllini or libri fatalcs.X But such precautions as were taken do not seem to have been more than partially successful. Oracles of this kind absorbed forgeries of a more or less political aim, and the authorized collection had to be purged from time to time. In 13 B.C. Augustus included this among his religious reforms, and Tiberius had to prevent an anonymous Sibj'Uine book from being added to the list ; the Emperor showed himself more sceptical than the quinaeeim- iiiri sncri.^ faciundis,% who were oliicially re- sponsible for the interpretation of the oracles and for the application of their mysterious commands to the national life. In times of disaster and mis- fortune, or when prodigies occurred, the Romans turne<l to this sacred collection. Whatever mea- sures it dictated^fasts, f(\asts, expiations, or the like — were carried out with trembling, anxious care, as during the ])anic roused by Hannibal's cani]iaign in Northern Italy. The Sibylline collec- tion met, or was skilfully manipulated to meet,