EyeItalia

One of humanity’s most recurrent questions: would we like to know our future in advance? This question was common in ancient Greece and Rome’s time as well; those who dared to face the often-terrible truth about the days ahead of them could do so thanks to oracles. Oracles were priests or, more often, priestesses, who were given by a God the knowledge of the future, and they would pass on this knowledge to rulers and generals, but also to whomever could afford a consistent donation to the God. They had dedicated sanctuaries, among which the most famous is Apollo’s sanctuary in Delphi.

A level above the oracles was a demigoddess, named the Sibyl, who thanks to her divine origin stood a step closer to absolute truth, yet she spoke only to an extremely limited number of common mortals – just to those who were to change history.
She was said to travel from place to place and to live for centuries and millennia. Later on the legend evolved into claiming that different places each had a Sibyl, and she would be called by the name of the place she inhabited rather than by her first name. We’re told that there were almost thirty Sibyls, of which two are particularly important: the Delphic Sibyl and the Cumaean Sibyl.

The Delphic Sibyl was said to live near Apollo’s sanctuary in Delphi and to be the God’s half sister; she would not take part in the ordinary activities of the oracle, however her mere presence was hugely influential in making Delphi the world’s most important oracle sanctuary.

The Cumaean Sibyl was even more important for the history of our planet: she lived in Southern Italy’s town of Cumae, near Naples, and intervened twice in humanity’s destiny. The first time she instructed Aeneas, the Trojan hero and demigod (son of the Goddess of Love, Venus), who traveled to Italy after the destruction of his hometown to found Alba Longa, the town where Romulus and Remus, future founders of Rome, were born.
The second time was around 510 B.C. when she traveled to Rome to offer Tarquinius Superbus (the last king of Rome, ousted from power in 509 when the Republic was declared) nine books containing the truth about the future. As she was asking an exorbitantly high price for the books the king initially declined the offer; therefore she burned three of them in front of his eyes, only to offer him the remaining six for the same price than before. Tarquinius refused once more, to finally pay the original price for the only three remaining books, which remained some of Rome’s most valued belongings until they were lost in a fire in 83 B.C. According to the legend it’s thanks to the secrets written in those books that Rome went on to become the most powerful and longest lasting (753 B.C. – 1453 AD) empire in history.

Among the Sibyls’ prophecies was the coming of a Savior, which should have taken place in the years Jesus Christ was born; therefore even in the Middle Ages the Roman Catholic Church had sympathy for these deities, unlike for most other pagan gods and demigods. Their sympathy grew to the extent that in Christianity’s most sacred shrine, the Sistine Chapel in Rome (visit www.mv.vatican.va ) you can see some of the most important Sibyls painted by Michelangelo. Even today some believe that the Cumaean Sibyl still inhabits a cave in Central Italy’s Sibylline Mountains, where she moved after the diffusion of Christianity in Italy.

Should you decide that you’re as brave as the bravest Greeks and Romans and wish to learn about your future, we would be thrilled to help you out in your search for the Sibyl and help you organize a holiday in those places soaked with ancestral magic. Let us know!

EyeItalia will soon be offering a series of wonderful acquaforte etchings by the Florentine artist Andrea Ricceri, depicting Michelangelo’s frescoes of the Sibyls (in stock October 1st, 2008).

–Camillo Mekacher Vogel