glory of lijjht, he behold a beautiful virgin holding an infant in her arms, and at the same time a voice was heard saying, "This is the akar of the son of the liv- ing God;" whereupon Augustus caused an altar to be erected upon Capitoline Hill, with this inscription, Aid J'iiiii<);/(-iiili Dfi: and on the same si)ot, in later times, was built the church called the .-1 ra Cctli, well known, ■with its flight of 124 steps, to all who have visited Kome. A very rude but curious bass-relief, preserved in the church of the Ara Culi, is perhaps the oldest rep- resentation extant. The Church legend assigns to it a fabulous anticpiity; and it must Ije older tiian the Tith century, as it is alluded to by writers of that period. Here tlie emperor Augustus kneels before the jNIadouna and Cliild. and at his side is the sibyl Tilnirtina, pointing upwards (Mrs. .Jameson, Legends of the Madonmi, p. 197). I. Lost Works. — The so-called SihylUiie Books of an- tiquity were certain writings regarded with much ven- eration and guarded with great care. The legend con- cerning tliem is that a .sibyl (some say the Cumsean, others the Ionian) came to Tarquin II (or Tanpiin the Superb) with nine books, which she offered to sell for a very high price. Tarquin refusing to purchase, the sibvl went away and burned three of the volumes. IJeturning, she asked the same price for the remaining six; and when Tarquin again refused to buy, she went and destroyed three inore. She came once more to Tanpiin demanding the same price for the three as she had for the nine. Her behavior struck the king, and upon his augurs advising him to do so, he bought the vol- umes. Tiie sibyl disappeared and was never seen after- wards. The books were preserved with great care, and ■were called Sibylline Verses, etc. They were said to have been written on palm-leaves, partly in verse and partly in symbolical hieroglyphics. The public were never allowed to inspect them, but they were kept in the Temple of .Jupiter Capitolinus, preserved in a stone chest. A college of priests was appointed to have charge of them. It was the duty of this college to consult these bfioks on all occasions when the gods manifested their wrath by intlicting calamities upon the Romans. The answers which were ilerived from them were almost invarialily of a religious nature, as they either com- manded the introduction of some new worship, or the institution of new ceremonies and festivals or the repe- tition of old ones. In B.C. Si), the Temple of .Jupiter ■«'a8 burned and the Sibtjlline Books consumed. In or- der to restore them, commissioners were appointed to visit various places in Italy, (ireece, and Asia INIinor, to collect any Sibylline oracles that could be found. They collected aliout a thousand verses, which were placed in the Temple of .hqiiter, after it had been destroyed. Tiie Sibtjlliiie Hooks were also biirniid in the reign of Nero, in the reign of Julian (A.I), od.'l), and a fourth time in that of the emperor llonorius (A.I). 395); but they were restored each time. Notwithstanding many forgeries ■which had crept in, they were still held in great esteem, and we fiml them consulted even as late as the (jth cen- tury. See .\nllion, Cluss. iJict. s. v. " Sil>yll:e."
11. K.rl(rnt Writings. — It is certain, from Roman his- tory, that Sibylline oracles were committed to writing, and that .Sibylline books were |ireserved; and it is a well-known fact that when tlie conquests of Alex- ander and the Romans in the East brought in a pe- riod of religious syncretism, the faith of the nations in their traditional religions gave way to sui)ersiiiions of every form, and was rejilaced no less by an interest in prophecies of every sort tlian l)y an inclination to the practice of secret arts. It is not strange, accord- ingly, that traces are found of a Chaldee and a Baby- lonian and even of a Hebrew sibyl. Wlien Christian- ity began to assail heatlienism with literary weapons, the belief in sibyls was wide-s|)read and general, and numerous professed oracles were in circulation. Nor was Christendom itself disinclined to accept the popu- lar belief upon this subject, or to turn thai Itelief to its profit. The theologians and writers of the earliest pe-
riod are especially open to this charge, e. g. Justin, Athenagoras, Tlieophilus, and Clemens Alexandrinus. So general was the ajipeal to the Sibylline oracles among these writers tliat tlieir antagonist Celsus terms them friends, or even manufacturers, of the sibjds (cn- f-ivWiaTai, Origen, Conf. Celstim, v. 01). The tendency was less apjiarent in the Western Cliurch, though Lac- tantius makes more extended and reckless use of this form of argument than does any other writer in either Church; and the writings of Tertullian, .Jerome, and Augustine are not free from favorable mention of the Sihi/lliiie hooks. See Besant^on, Be I'Bmploi que les Peres de l' Ef/lise out fait des Oracles jSibi/llins (18.ol).
1. nistori/ of the Text.— The (ireek text of the Sib- yllines was lost from sight during the Middle Ages, and it was reserved for certain himianists of the 16th century to unearth a number of manuscripts and pub- lish their contents to the world. The oracles are in each edition divided into eight books, but the text is everywhere exceedingly corriqit, and even marred by arbitrary emendations. The earliest critical editions date from the beginning of our century, e. g. that of cardinal Mai (1817 and 1828), and subsequently ap- peared those of Alexandre (Paris, 1841) and Friedlieb (Leipsic, 1852). The number of manuscripts thus far recovered aiTiounts to scarcely a dozen, and they have not yet been fully examined. They exhibit great di- vergencies of both text and arrangement; the language and versitication are not everywhere governed by the same standards — the language and even the phrases of Homer, Hesiod, Euripides, and Pseudo-Orpheus be- ing contained in them, and no less those of the Septua- gint and of the New Test. If to these considerations we add that entire sections are wanting from some manuscripts, and that whole sections have been added in others, and also that the numerous citations in the Church fathers from the tSibi/lliiies afford no aid to- wards a settling of the text, it will be apparent that definite results in this field are scarcely to be expected. See Thorlacius, Libri Sibyl. Veteris Ecclesue (Copenh. 1815); Volkmann, Be Orac. Sibi/l. (Lips. 1853); Fried- lieb, Be Codd. Sibyl. (Bremen, J847); Floder, Vestigia Homer, et Hesiod. in Oracc. Sib. (Ups. 1770); and othir monographs cited hj' Volbeding, Index Program, p. 14.