• The variant tradition of nine reached Shakespeare. The Bastard in Kin{j Uenry VI. (pt. i. act i. scene ii. hnc8 65-67), describing Joan of Arc, flays :
' The spirit of deep prophecy she hath. Exceeding the nine sibyls of old Rome : What's past and what's to come she can descry.'
t Cf. Enunanuel Hofmann's paper on ' Die tarquinischen Sibyllen-hiicher' in Rheinisches Museum /iir Philoiogi^, new ser.', 1. [IS!tf>] 90-113.
I According to some recent critics, e.g. F. Hampers (in Ilisliir. Zeit.-ichrift, 1908, p. 2:'.2 1.). the new harvest of .sibyllina inirluded some Jewish Alexandrian productions, which in- Huenced Vergil. See. further, J. B. Mayor's paper in the Hxji. 7th ser. iii. [1907) 289 fl.
§ When his patron's son was elected to this board of officials, Tiimllus (ii. 5) wrote a poem for the occasion, in which he invokes Pha3bn8 Aj)ollo, utnler whose guidance 'the Sibyl has never played the Romans false, singing Kate's secrets in hexa meters' (16 f.).
478
SIBYLLIKE OKACLES
SlBYLLmE ORACLES
the popular appetite for appeasing the siiper- natiirul, which prodigies and defeats created from time to time. Tliese Koinan oracles originally were not so niucli predictions of woes to come, like apocalyptic tracts, as explanations of what was recinired to avert the anger of the gods and ward off evil to the State on earth. They were not 'vaticiuia' but ' reiuedia Sibyllina,' as Pliny puts it {Hy xi. 35). They were also esoteric literature ; the consent of the Senate was required before a line of their contents could be divulged to the general public. This put considerable power into the hands of the officials who had charge of them, especially as the obscurity of their contents made the sense of certain passages conveniently ambigu- ous, and it is not surprising to lind that, as time went on, their reputation suffered in the same way as the Greek oracles ; the Roman, like the Greek, Sibyllina might 'philippize' ; genuine lines might be interpreted for private ends, if a political leader could influence the expositors, and forged lines could be surreptitiously introduced. Still, for two centuries at least, these oracles had a singular power over the religious hopes and fears of the people. An odd story like that preserved by Petronius* in the 1st cent. a.d. must not be allowed to count unduly against the esteem w^hich was still felt for the oracles. But their influence was upon the wane. Thus, in A.D. 270, when the Alemanni invaded Italy, the Senate hesitated to consult the Sibyllina, and Aurelian had to incite them (Vopiscus, Vita Aureliani, 20) ; the Emperor taunted them with behaving as if they were in a Christian church — a significant indication of the changed attitude towards these oracles ! Their use lingered down to the age of Julian. Then the Christian reaction proved fatal to them, and Stilicho is said to have burned the entire official collection at the beginning of the 5th century. His action was bitterly resented, as we can see from the indignant verses of Ilutilius Numantianus, but the protest did not affect the fact; Stilicho's action had made it impossible for the authorities to appeal in future to this ancient relic of pagan divination. t
Besides the official collection, however, Sibylline oracles passed current in large numbers among the people. Lactantius, who has preserved several important data on the subject, declares that only the Cumsean Sibyl's oracles, amounting to three books, were kept secret, t while the writings of the other Sibyls for the most part circulated freely. It is true, as we have seen, that the very ditt'usion of such verses led to the partial discrediting of the entire literature as a religious authority of im- partial value, but long before tliis shadow fell upon the Sibyllina at Rome the Hellenistic Jews of Alexandria had taken advantage of the current Sibylline verse as a literary genre and started a new, ingenious development of the method.
2. The Jewish Sibylline oracles. — We come upon Jewish Sibylline oracles before we bear of a Jewish Sibyl. The latter is first nientioned by Alexander Polyhistor, the Greek author of Xa\6ai\d, in the 1st cent. B.C., who quotes what is apparently an oracle still extant in Sib. Orac. iii. 97 ff. It is necessary to say 'apparently,' for serious doubts have been thrown recently upon Alexander's indebtedness to
• His drunken hero, Trimalchio (Satyricmi, 48), alleges, * I once saw with my own eyes the Sibyl hanging in a cage at Cumse, and when the boys called to her, "Sibyl, what do you want?" she replied, " I want to die.'"
t On the whole subject, see G. Wissowa, Religion und Eiiltns (ler Roiner, Munich, lfl02, pp. 462-476, and W. Buchholz's article in Roscher, pp. 790-813, with the penetrating discussion in A. Bouche-Leclercq's Uiatoire de la dicination daiu/ VantiquiU, 4 vols., Paris, 1879-81, ii. 199 f.
t Justin {ApoL i. 44) denounces this as a device of evil demons, to prevent men from reading evidence for the truth of God 1
a Jewish source ; both GeflTcken * and Bousset t jirefer to lind traces of a Babylonian (Greek) Sibyl- line oracle, and Schiirer's criticism of this theory does not succeed in ruling it out of court. The exact relations between the Jewi.sh Sibyl and the ChaUUean have not yet been cleared up. Pau- sanias vouches for four Sibyls, the Krythra-an Hero- phile, the Cunnean Demo, a Libyan prophetess, and ' subsequent to Demo, an oracular woman among the Hebrews, named Sabbe ; Berosus is said to have been the father, Erymanthes the mother, of Sabbe. Some call her the Babylonian, others the Egyptian Sibyl ' (x. 12). A later variant for 'Sabbe' is ' Sambethe,' which is variously ex- plained. But among these uncertainties the fact shines clear, that by the 2nd cent. B.C. the literary method of the Sibylline oracles had been exploited by one or more Jewish authors at Alexandria, in the interests of religious apologetic and propa- ganda. Like the older Pliilo, Theodotus, and possibly the author of the pseudo-Phocylifhean verses, the Jews who compo.sed tliese Sibylline oracles of their own could write Greek hexameters. J They chose this pagan form in order not only to convey threats of doom against persecuting powers like Assyria and Rome, but also to win a hearing among outside circles for their own monotheism and moralisui. Why should not the Sibyl, this recognized exponent of Divine things, voice the true inspiration of Israel as well as the secondary revelation of the nations ? Why should not this authoritative channel convey the living water of Jewish truth, or rather of truth as only the Jews knew it ? And so this form of pseudonymous literature came into vogue.§