Delphic Sibyl

From Wikinfo

Michelangelo's rendering of the Delphic Sibyl

The Delphic Sibyl, or Delphica, was the prophetic priestess presiding over the Apollonian Oracle at Delphi, a Greek colony,located in a plateau on the side of Mount Parnassus, where She sang her predictions and wrote her prophecies on bay leaves.

The word Sibyl comes (via Latin) from the ancient Greek word sibylla, meaning prophetess. There were many Sibyls in the ancient world, but the Delphic Sibyl was among the most admired of the Sibyls because of her physical and ideal beauty. The Sibyl lived on Mount Parnassus and once told Oedipus his unfortunate future.

Two places claimed to be the birthplace of this Sibyl who is traditionally know as the third Sibyl, namely Marpessus in the Troad and Erythrse. There are various names for the the Sibyl: Pythia, Herophile and Delphica, and spoken of by Chrysippus in his book on divination.

Pausanias claimed that the Sybil was "born between man and goddess, daughter of sea monsters and an immortal nymph". Others said she was sister or daughter to Apollo. Still others claimed the Sybil received her powers from Gaia originally, who passed the oracle to Thetis, who passed it to Phoebe.

The Sibyl came from the Troad to Delphi before the Trojan War, "in wrath with her brother Apollo," lingered for a time at Samos, visited Claros and Delos, and died in the Troad, after surviving nine generations of men. After her death she became a wandering voice which still brought to the ears of men tidings of the future wrapped in dark enigmas.

Originally the priestess of the sanctuary was chosen from among the local virgins but later she had to be a woman of over 50 whose life was beyond reproach.

The Sibyl delivered replies inspired by Apollo in answer to the questions put the pilgrims. First she drank from Cassotis fountain near the temple which was supposed to bestow the gift of prophecy, then she entered the temple crypt where she breathed the fumes of burning laurel leaves (Apollo's tree) and barley meal. Finally she took her seat on the famous tripod, a sort of three- footed cauldron (others say she sat on the Sibylline Rock, near to the omphalos and Dionysus tomb. The pilgrims (men only) were admitted to the neighboring room where they gave their questions to the priests who passed them on to the Sybil. She went into a trance, the sounds that she uttered, her posture and her convulsive movements were interpreted by the priests who delivered the oracle couched in ambiguous phrases in hexameter verse. The replies took the form of advise rather than predictions. The Sybil seems to have been well informed in politics, in turn she favoured Xerxes during the Persian invasions, then Athens, Sparta and Thebes in the 4c BC, then Phillip of Macedon and Alexander the Great and finally Rome. When Julian the Apostate (361-363 AD), the last pagan emperor of Rome, sent his quaestor, Oribasius, to consult the Pythian oracle, its utterance was worthy to be its own epitaph. Go tell the king - the carven hall is felled, Apollo has no cell, prophetic bay. Nor talking spring, his cadenced well is stilled. It was finally closed in 381 by the Byzantine emperor Theodosius the Great.