Welcome To Carmen's Page Of Sibyls!

• D.S. Potter's Prophecy and History
• Pausanias
• Overview sur la sibylle
• Images: The Rock at Delphi, Cumae, Cave, Entrance, Chamber
• Princeton Encyclopedia
• Christian Sources:  Lactantius, Justin

From Prophecy and History in the Crisis of the Roman Empire
Written by D.S. Potter

    "In the late fifth century BC it does appear that 'Sibylla' was the name given to a single inspired prophetess.  It would also appear that her words were circulated as books of prophecy and that her name was inserted in these books.  This may also have been the case with books attributed to other early prophets such as Orpheus, Epimenides, Bacis, or Musaeus, and the inclusion of a name served to differentiate her utterances from those of the prophets and prophetesses at oracular shrines who spoke only as the mouthpiece of a god, and who did not include details of their lives in their responses.  The circulation of such collections in Greece may be traced back to at least the sixth century, the time when the activity of chresmologists, ‘oracle-collectors’, is first attested.  All that can be said is that ‘Sibylla’ appears to have been less interesting to people in mainland Greece than other prophets, such as Bacis or Epimenides, until the end of the fourth century.  This may well be the case because the areas that seem to be connected with her activity in the earliest period, Erythrae and Marpessus in the Troad were in Asia Minor.  Like other wandering prophets, she was not associated with a specific shrine and was thought to produce here oracles because she had some sort of special divine knowledge.  The form of her prophecies may have been much like that of the surviving books: a series of conditional and final clauses say that ‘when certain conditions obtain, something will happen’.  It does not seem to be the case that her books had any unity other than that they were supposed to contain the utterances of a single prophetess.
 “It is impossible to know how this form of prophetic behavior developed.  It has been argued that the Sibylline tradition developed because there was in fact a famous prophetess of that name who was a representative of an indigenous tradition in the Troad.  This may be true (it is impossible to prove), but it does not explain the currency of the style of prophecy with which the Sibyl is associated.  She was just one of a number of mythical and semi-mythical characters to whom such books were attributed.  The format, a long collection of prophecies uttered by a single prophet, has obvious earlier parallels in Palestine, Mesopotamia, and the wisdom literature of Egypt.  Therefore the most likely explanation for the spread of this form of presentation in archaic Greece is that it was borrowed from the east.  What does not seem to be paralleled – though it must be emphasized that many of the surviving texts from Mesopotamia are broken in such a way that it is not possible to know who the prophet was – is the association of a woman with this sort of book.  But this is not a serious problem.  Both men and women had an important role as prophets in the Greek world, and even if the form was ‘borrowed’ from anther culture, it is entirely to be expected that it would be interpreted within the spectrum of Greek activity.  Hence, both men and women could be imagined as producing such books.
 “The number of Sibyls proliferated in the wake of Alexander’s conquest of the east.  According to Varro, who composed a list of them for his work on the Antiquities of Human and Divine Matters, there were ten of them: The Babylonian, the Libyan, the Delphic, the Cimmerian, the Erythraean, the Samian, the Cumaean, the Hellespontine, the Phrygian, and the Tiburtine.  The Libyan Sibyl may be a creation of Varro, or an earlier scholar, based on Euripides’ Busiris.  The Babylonian Sibyl was reported by Nicanor, the author of a history of Alexander (and possibly a member of his staff), the Delphic Sibyl was discussed by Chryssippus in his work on divination, and the Cimmerian was the invention of Naevius.  The Erythraean appeared in the work of Apollodorus of Erythrae, the Samian was uncovered by Eratosthenes, and the Hellespontine was discussed by Heracleides Ponticus.  Heracleides is known from other sources to have mentioned the Phrygian Sibyl, and he may be the source for Var.’s knowledge of her as well.  Varro does not give a source for information on the Cumaean Sibyl  (who was too well known in Rome to require such annotation) but he does tell the story of her dealings with Tarquin; nor does he name his source for the Tiburtine Sibyl, presumably because she was also too well known.  This list, which is representative rather than complete, may reflect the growth of the doxographic tradition in the Hellenistic world.
 “A somewhat different picture of Sibylline texts is provided by Pausanias.  The variation is the result of a difference in perspective: Varro seems to have derived his knowledge of Sibyls from the works of other learned men while Pausanias derived his from personal reading of the texts and visits to the homes of famous Sibyls.  Pausanias sets forth most of his knowledge about Sibyls in a digression artfully placed at the point during his tour of Delphi where he saw the rock upon which the Sibyl was supposed to have sung her prophecies.  He says that the Sibyl who sang there was named Herophile.  She was younger than the ‘earlier Sibyl’ who had been the daughter of Zeus and of Lamia, the daughter of Poseidon, and who had been given the name ‘Sibylla’ by the Libyans.  Despitethis, Herophile was still born before the Trojan War:  she had foretold the birth of Helen at Sparta and the ruin that the daughter of Leda would bring to Europe and Asia.  She was the same woman whom the Delians remembered as the author of a poem to Apollo.  It also seemed to have been the case that she suffered from divine possession and insanity while she spoke:  at times she would say that she was Artemis and the wedded wife of Apollo, at others she would say simply that she was her sister or daughter.  In another place in her ‘oracles’ she said that she was the daughter of a mortal and a nymph on Ida.
 “In his account of Herophile, Pausanias is clearly conflating a number of accounts he discovered in oracles which had been attributed to her because of the autobiographical accounts they contained.  He reconciled them by assuming that she was possessed and therefore not to be held responsible for any inconsistency.  The story Pausanias decided was true made her the daughter of a nymph and placed her birth at Marpessus in the Troad.  He had even been to visit the place and seen her tomb in the Sminthian grove near Alexandria Troas.  He seems to have been impressed not only by the tomb, but also by the fact that the inhabitants of Alexandria were able to tell him that she had been an attendant at the temple when she gave ‘that prophecy which we know to be true’ on the occasion of Hecuba’s dream.  He goes on to say that she spent a great deal of her life on Samos, but that she also visited Delphi and Delos.  He was so convinced by the people at Alexandria that he said that the people of Erythrae, who also claimed her as their citizen, were frauds.
 “The next Sibyl whom he mentions is Demo, the Sibyl of Cumae.  He also says that when he visited Cumae he had not been impressed.  All that the people there could show him was a small stone urn in which her bones had been placed.  They could not even quote any of her verses.  He also knew of a later Sibyl named Sabbe, who was the daughter of Berosus and Erymanthe.  He asserts that she lived with the ‘Jews around Palestine’ but that others called her Babylonian and still others called her Egyptian.  He also knew of women who had given prophecies but were not called Sibyls.
 “Pausanias’ account is of particular interest because it shows how a pious, somewhat traditional, thinking man would react to the information about Sibyls in the oracles that he had read and at the sites that he had visited.  He also places these Sibyls very firmly in a local context and suggests something of the rivalry between cities that laid claim to a particularly famous Sibyl as a fellow citizen.  In fact, two of the places he mentions were soon to improve the evidence for their Sibylline connections.  By 161, when Lucius Verus arrived at Erythrae, he found a newly constructed shrine to the local Sibyl, a complete with a fountain and statues, one of them inscribed with a long poem giving the details of the Sibyl’s life.  At Cumae, at about the same time, the Sibyl’s bones were moved to a large bronze phakos and the cave where she gave her prophecies was shown to tourists.  This seems to have impressed the author of the Cohortatio ad Graecos, who visited the spot in the third century.
 “The evidence of Pausanias is especially important because it places the Sibyls in their proper context within the Roman world.  In Pausanias, as in the works of his contemporary Lucian, we can see that she was a respected prophetess.  Lucian suggests through  his parodies that Sibylline verses were quoted, as were those of Bacis, to lend an air of authority to contemporary events.  It seems to have been important to people that the coming of Alexander of Abonuteichos had been predicted by a Sibyl and that the Sibyl would speak on the subject of Peregrinus’ self-immolation.  Pausanias suggests that Sibyls were venerated for their powers and that they were cherished members of the civic community.  They were people about whom civic dignitaries cared deeply and in honor of whom they spent money.  Pausanias also places the composition of Sibylline verse in its proper milieu: among the educated classes of the Greek east, among the people who thought that she increased the dignity of their city and who would have the education to compose in verse.  These verses are not always eloquent, but they do represent the sort of versification that an average educated man could produce.
 “Varro does not discuss (there is no reason why he should) and Pausanias only briefly alludes to the appropriation of the Sibyl as a prophet by other peoples (most notably the Jews of Alexandria) in their efforts to claim intellectual respectability in a Greek context.  This process may be compared to the similar appropriation of other wise men of the classical past.  It is also the case that this proliferation might not have been a significant development if it were not for the existence of the libri Sibyllini at Rome.  An effort to replace the collection after it was destroyed in 83 BC certainly caused great interest in the Greek east, and the well-advertised connection between Sibyls and the greatness of Rome may well have made her words more interesting than those of other prophets throughout the Mediterranean world.  It may also help to explain why Jewish Sibylline verses which echoed Old Testament prophecy were popular among Christian apologists.  In the works of these apologists the Sibyl was elevated to the position of the greatest prophetess of antiquity.
 
 

XII. There is a rock rising up above the ground. On it, say the Delphians, there stood and
chanted the oracles a woman, by name Herophile and surnamed Sibyl. The former Sibyl I find was as ancient as any; the Greeks say that she was a daughter of Zeus by Lamia, daughter of Poeidon, that she was the first woman to chant oracles, and that the name Sibyl was given her by the Libyans. [2] Herophile was younger than she was, but nevertheless she too was clearly born before the Trojan war, as she foretold in her oracles that Helen would be brought up in Sparta to be the ruin of Asia and of Europe, and that for her sake the Greeks would capture Troy. The Delians remember also a hymn this woman composed to Apollo. In her poem she calls  herself not only Herophile but also Artemis, and the wedded wife of Apollo, saying too sometimes that she is his sister, and sometimes that she is his daughter.  [3] These statements she made in her poetry when in a frenzy and possessed by the god. Elsewhere in her oracles she states that her mother was an immortal, one of the nymphs of Ida, while her father was a human.  These are the verses:--

                          I am by birth half mortal, half divine;
                          An immortal nymph was my mother, my father an eater of corn;
                          On my mother's side of Idaean birth, but my fatherland was red
                          Marpessus, sacred to the Mother, and the river Aidoneus.

                          I am by birth half mortal, half divine;
                          An immortal nymph was my mother, my father an eater of corn;
                          On my mother's side of Idaean birth, but my fatherland was red
                          Marpessus, sacred to the Mother, and the river Aidoneus.

[4] Even to-day there remain on Trojan Ida the ruins of the city Marpessus, with some sixty inhabitants. All the land around Marpessus is reddish and terribly parched, so that the light and porous nature of Ida in this place is in my opinion the reason why the river Aidoneus sinks into the ground, rises to sink once more, finally disappearing altogether beneath the earth. Marpessus is two hundred and forty stades distant from Alexandria in the Troad. [5] The inhabitants of this Alexandria say that Herophile became the attendant of the temple of Apollo Smintheus, and that on the occasion of Hecuba's dream she uttered the prophecy which we know was actually fulfilled. This Sibyl passed the greater part of her life in Samos, but she also visited Clarus in the         territory of Colophon, Delos and Delphi. Whenever she visited Delphi, she would stand on this rock and sing her chants. [6] However, death came upon her in the Troad, and her tomb is in the grove of the Sminthian with these elegiac verses inscribed upon the tomb-stone:--

                          Here I am, the plain-speaking Sibyl of Phoebus,
                          Hidden beneath this stone tomb.
                          A maiden once gifted with voice, but now for ever voiceless,
                          By hard fate doomed to this fetter.
                          But I am buried near the nymphs and this Hermes,
                          Enjoying in the world below a part of the kingdom I had then.

The Hermes stands by the side of the tomb, a square-shaped figure of stone. On the left is water                     running down into a well, and the images of the nymphs. [7] The Erythraeans, who are more eager than any other Greeks to lay claim to Herophile, adduce as evidence a mountain called Mount Corycus with a cave in it, saying that Herophile was born in it, and that she was a daughter of Theodorus, a shepherd of the district, and of a nymph. They add that the surname Idaean was given to the nymph simply because the men of those days called idai places that were thickly wooded. The verse about Marpessus and the river Aidoneus is cut out of the oracles by the Erythraeans.  [8] The next woman to give oracles in the same way, according to Hyperochus of Cumae, a historian, was called Demo, and came from Cumae in the territory of the Opici. The Cumaeans       can point to no oracle given by this woman, but they show a small stone urn in a sanctuary of Apollo, in which they say are placed the bones of the Sibyl. [9] Later than Demo there grew up among the Hebrews above Palestine a woman who gave oracles and was named Sabbe. They say that the father of Sabbe was Berosus, and her mother Erymanthe. But some call her a Babylonian Sibyl, others an Egyptian.

Sibylle de Cumes
        "In ancient legends women who could predict the future were called sibyls. These prophets were believed to be inspired by the gods and were found primarily in the famous oracle centers, particularly those of Apollo, the Greek god of prophesy.
        Sibyls were believed to live 900 to 1,000 years. According to the legends, some could interpret dreams and others could make their voices heard after death. Early Greek writers only mentioned only one sibyl, Erythraean Herophile, who predicted the Trojan war. Later on the number of sibyls were increased to ten, including the Samian, the Trojan, the Phrygian, the Cimmerian, the Delphian, the Cumaean, the Libyan, the Tiburtine, and the Babylonian. Of these the most important was Deiphobe."

Sibylle et Rome
        "Centuries ago, concurrent with the Fiftieth Olympiad and the Founding of the City of Rome, an old woman arrived incognita in Rome. She came to see King Tarquin. She told him that she came on business, which she then clarified for him: she came to see him on the business of the state. She offered to sell him nine books. Her price was three hundred pieces of gold. The king couldn't believe his ears. Nor his eyes. "Books? What books?" She was such an old woman! "I want to sell you nine books," she told him. "They contain the destiny of the world." The king still could not believe his ears. "The what?" he asked. "The future of the world," she told him in simpler terms. "My books contain the destiny of the world." "Even so," said the king. "The price seems too high..." A few weeks later -- for the old woman had to journey all the way from Rome to Cumae, which is on the north hook of the Bay of Naples, and then, all the way back, crossing the farm lands of Campania -- she presented herself again at the audience chamber of King Tarquin. "What now?" he impatiently asked. She was really an old, old woman. "I offer you six books for sale," she answered. "How much?" he asked. "I told you. Three hundred pieces of gold." "Too much." Some time later, for the old woman was not as young as she used to be, and the roads between Cumae and Rome are very long roads in any century, she presented herself again at the court of King Tarquin. "I can offer you three books," she told the king. "How much?" he inquired. "Same price. Three hundred pieces of gold," she said. "What happened to the other six," he asked. "I burnt them," she said. King Tarquin bought the three remaining books, which contained the destiny of the world, for three hundred pieces of gold, from the old woman. She was the Cumaean Sibyl in person. Then he asked her to rewrite, or to have reconstituted, the other six books. "No," was her reply. After he had read his three books, he asked her again. "No," she repeated. Thus, great Rome rose to be a kingdom and subsequently flourished as a republic, which conquered Gaul under Julius Caesar. Then Rome inaugurated its worldwide empire. That Caesar was stabbed to death in the Roman Forum. And all these centuries, Rome expanded but never knew its destiny, until it finally collapsed. What wisdom might have been gleaned from those six burnt books?
        In a closely guarded vault beneath the Capitoline temple of Jupiter (in Rome) were once kept the renowned sibylline books, which were consulted by the college of priests on the occasion of earthquakes and other disasters. History records that the Apollonian sibyl who dwelt by the spring at Cumae originally offered Tarquinius Superbus (534-510 BCE) nine books of oracular utterances in Greek hexameters. The price being too high, Tarquinius rejected the offer, only to learn that she was burning the books of wisdom one by one. When the sibyl shrewdly offered the remaining three books for the same exorbitant sum as the original nine, he paid the price, and the books were preserved until the disastrous fire which incinerated the Capitol in 83 BCE.

        After that disaster, the Senate sent envoys to various oracles to collect similar prophecies, assembling a collection that survived for several centuries until it was reportedly destroyed by Stilicho.
The Roman Senate ordered two Roman patricians to rewrite the lost Sibylline Books. Later, their ranks were increased to Ten Men; their ranks were, in turn, increased to Fifteen Men, later to increase to a whole College of Priests charged to reframe the lost Sibylline Books. No one else was ever permitted to read the three original Books. One Marcus Atilius was sewn into a sack and thrown into the Tiber River for authorizing someone to copy them.

        Julius Caesar gave a copy of the Sibylline Books to his high priests, who were the only public servants legally allowed to read them. These Books were guarded, stored, and preserved in subterranean chambers of the Capitoline Hill. Those chambers and the temple on the Hill had been completed and consecrated in 500 BCE. The Sibylline Books were finally completely destroyed in 83 CE when the temple of Jove Capitolinus burned.

        Augustus Caesar authorized a High Commission to seek out capable authors worldwide, who were to rewrite, edit, and reestablish the Sibylline Books. They may now be read in The Apocryphal Literature edited by Charles Cutler Torrey, who has said that the present Books IV and V were written by the Sibyl who introduced herself as a granddaughter of Noah.

        The Sibylline Books and their troubled history may also be traced in the extant books of Roman historian Livy (Volume III). He follows their thread from the year 461 BCE, when the two original commissioners (duumviri -- "two men") consulted the Books because of a terrible earthquake when the heavens also blazed -- and again in 443 BCE, when people and cattle were struck by an epidemic. The Sibylline Books warned Rome of all multiples of three.

        The Senate had recourse to the Books again in 399 BCE, a year of catastrophic distemper in humans and livestock. In 343 BCE, they were again consulted because of a fearsome omen: a shower of stones fell on Rome.

        Livy says it was the Cumaean Sibyl who told the Romans that their Gods and Goddesses had been imported from Greece. When a pestilence decimated the Romans in 293 BCE, the Books instructed them to send for the healer  Asclepius.

        During the winter of 218 BCE, a horrendous time for Rome, Romans were terrified because of a large number of prodigies:

A baby of six months of age suddenly uttered, "Victoria!"
An ox climbed three stories and then jumped.
Phantom ships gleamed in the sky. [This one might be of interest to UFO researchers.]
The temple of Hope was struck by lightning.
A wolf snatched a sentry’s sword.

        The situation in Rome grew most precarious the next spring (217 BCE) when Hannibal moved out of his winter quarters to finish his so-far highly successful campaigns against Rome.
        That spring in both Italy and Sicily, the heavens gave many warnings. First, the orb of the sun decreased in size. Then it appeared to be colliding with the moon. Then two moons appeared in the daytime sky. Then the sky split apart; through this rift a brilliant light shone, and then the sky appeared to catch fire. Then, in the city of Capua, during a rainstorm, one of these moons fell to earth. The same portent that had signaled the fall of Thebes occurred: a holy spring ran blood. The Cumaean Sibyl finally ordered the now hysterical populace to go out and sit at the crossroads and to pray to Triple Hecate, and last of all to bring from Asia the Black Stone of Mother Cybele, and then Cybele Herself, as their protectress in this grave emergency.

        Despite these records, and despite this long tradition of sanctity, the Cumaean Sibyls were considered fantasy until archaeologists proved their actual existence by discovering sticks and stones, tunnels and slabs of quarried rock, and the cave in which each Sibyl had lived at Cumae.

        Roman historian Varro listed ten Sibyls, not by origin, but by place of prophecy: Persian, Libyan, Delphic, Cimmerian (Italian), Erythraean (Ionian?), Samian (Isle of Samos), Cumaean, Phrygian (Trojan), and Tiburtine (Latin)."

        "The Cumaean Sybil was the most famous of of the Sybils, the prophetic old women of Greek mythology; she guided Aeneas through Hades in the Aeneid. She had been granted immortality by Apollo, but because she forgot to ask for perpetual youth, she shrank into withered old age and her authority declined.

        Virgil, in his Aeneid, describes the Cumaean Sibyl thus: "She changes her features and the color of her countenance; her hair springs up erect, her bosom heaves and pants, her wild heart beats violently, the foam gathers on her lips, and her voice is terrible." And when she was possessed, Virgil added, "She paces to and fro in her cave and gesticulates as if she would expel the gods from her breast."

        One of the Cumaean Sibyl's peculiarities, moreover, was that when consulted she would write her predictions on oak leaves and lay them at the edge of her cave, from which they were blown hither and yon by the wind and often confusedly mixed up, making them all but unintelligible to their readers. The Cumaean Sibyl, declared one historian, never sat on her tripod to give answers without first swallowing a few drops of the juice of the bay laurel.

        Quote : "For once I myself saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage, and when the boys said to her: 'Sibyl, what do you want?' she replied, 'I want to die.'"
        Références : L’Enéide : livre III, v.440-460 ; livre VI"
 
 

Saint Augustine, who admitted that the Sibyl spoke words received from the Judeo-Christian deity (from God) considered that there had been only one Sibyl. As more research was completed into the matter, the number of Sibyls had, by the Middle Ages, reached twelve. Other oracular centers were found: Colophon, Rhodes, Ephesus, and Sicily.

        An unidentified early Christian visited the site just after the Sibyl ceased to perform her priestly duties; i.e., before the end of Rome’s Republic and the death of Julius Caesar. This visitor was taken on a tour of the temple at Cumae and was told that the Sibyl had purified herself there. Donning a long, ceremonial robe, she proceeded solemnly to her chamber, seated herself upon a throne, and delivered her oracles. At the end of her chamber was the holier adyton or sacred inner chamber. The Cumaean Sibyl was especially venerated by early Christians not only for her prophetic gift but also because she had specifically prophesied the birth of Christ -- the fact of which most of today's Christians remain unaware.

        When they obliged by answering questions, the later priestesses employed several methods, either vocal, in writing, or by arcane signs and symbols. Often, they transcribed their answers onto palm leaves that the wind sometimes picked up and scattered, to the great consternation of the suppliant. [Such is the realm of the oracle -- cannot make it TOO easy!]

        Throughout all antiquity, it appears, Cumae was kept sacred, and it was dedicated by the priestesses of the dead to their Queen-Priestess Persephone, who had been abducted by Hades in Sicily."
 
 

The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites (eds. Richard Stillwell, William L. MacDonald, Marian
  Holland McAllister)

The site of the Sibyl's grotto was discovered in 1932, a trapezoidal gallery (131.5 x 2.4 m and an average height of 5 m) cut N-S into a solid tufa ridge below the acropolis, overlooking the sea through six similar trapezoidal bays, with a total of nine doorways (not all now documented) and, cut back into the rock on the left (E) side, three ceremonial baths later converted into cisterns; note the repetition of triads and the Sibyl's relation to Hekate (Trivia). The splendid archaic Greek stone-cutting is attributable to the 5th c. B.C. and reminiscent of Mycenaean and Etruscan dromoi. At the extreme (S) end is an arched chamber, the inmost adyton wherein Aeneas received oral instructions from the frenzied priestess; a vaulted chamber to the E, perhaps the        Sibyl's personal apartment, and a similar but smaller W chamber, probably for light and ventilation, open to left and right of the adyton. This last complex, with vertical walls and doorposts supporting semicircular arches, is a 4th-3d c. addition or alteration to the original gallery. Under the early Empire the whole floor was lowered 1.5 m to convert the entire grotto into a cistern; still later, parts were used for Christian inhumation.

The entrance to the Sibyl's grotto was part of an architectural unit including steps leading up to the Temple of Apollo (see below) and a ramp leading downward to the entrance of the so-called Cumaean Roman crypt, a long underground E-W tunnel passing under the acropolis. The operations of Narses against the Goths (A.D. 560), landslides, and quarrying have destroyed this impressive facade, but the crypt itself is undoubtedly attributable to Cocceius, the Augustan architect who also built the very similar crypt of Cocceius under Monte Grillo (see below) and the crypta Neapolitana tunnel between Puteoli and Neapolis. For 26 m the Cumaean crypt is barrel-vaulted 5 m high and then opens into an enormous Great Hall or “vestibule” 23 m high with
revetment of tufa blocks and with four niches for large statues; lighting for these and the whole crypt, of which the remainder was a normal tunnel, was supplied by vertical or oblique light-shafts down through the rock. Toward the E end enormous rock-cut storerooms and cisterns open on one side. Like the Sibyl's grotto, this crypt was eventually used for Christian burials.
 
 

"The first Christian to list the Sibyls was L.C.F. Lactantius (c. 260-340 CE). In his book on holy, religious institutions (Book I, Chapter 6), he lists the Sibyls as follows:

Persian (or Chaldean, who answered Alexander the Great)
Libyan (Her name was Lamia, meaning Snake or Medusa)
Delphic Sibyl(Mount Parnassus in Greece)
Cimmerian (Near Lake Avernus; i.e., Cumae)*
Erythraean (From Babylon; she predicted the Trojan War)
Samian (Isle of Samos, near Hera’s Temple)
Cumaean (Sibyls named: Deiphobe, Amalthea, Herophile, Demophile, Taraxandra)
Hellespontian (born at Troy during the lifetimes of Solon and Cyrus the Great)
Phrygian (Priestess of Cybele who prophesied at Ankara, Turkey)
Albanean or Tiburtine (Latin town of Tiburs)
 

Lactantius
Divine Institutes, Book I
Of the False Worship of the Gods

It remains for me to bring forward testimonies respecting the sacred responses and predictions, which are much more to be relied upon. For perhaps they against whom we are arguing may think that no credence is to be given to poets, as though they invented fictions, nor to philosophers, inasmuch as they were liable to err, being themselves but men. Marcus Varro, than whom no man of greater learning ever lived, even among the Greeks, much less among the Latins, in those books respecting divine subjects which he addressed to Caius Caesar the chief pontiff, when he was speaking of the Quindecemviri, says that the Sibylline books were not the production of one Sibyl only, but that they were called by one name Sibylline, because all prophetesses were called by the ancients Sibyls, either from the name of one, the Delphian priestess, or from their proclaiming the counsels of the gods. For in the Aeolic dialect they used to call the gods by the word Sioi, not Theoi; and for counsel they used the word bule, not boule; -- and so the Sibyl received her name as though Siobule. But he says that the Sibyls were ten in number, and he enumerated them all under the writers, who wrote an account of each:

that the first was from the Persians, and of her Nicanor made mention, who wrote the exploits of Alexander of Macedon;
the second of Libya, and of her Euripides makes mention in the prologue of the Lamia;
the third of Delphi, concerning whom Chrysippus speaks in that book which he composed concerning divination;
the fourth a Cimmerian in Italy, whom Naevius mentions in his books of the Punic war, and Piso in his annals;
the fifth of Erythraea, whom Apollodorus of Erythraea affirms to have been his own country-woman, and that she foretold to the Greeks when they were setting but for Ilium, both that Troy was doomed to destruction, and that Homer would write falsehoods;
the sixth of Samos, respecting whom Eratosthenes writes that he had found a written notice in the ancient annals of the Samians.
The seventh was of Cumae, by name Amalthaea, who is termed by some Herophile, or Demophile and they say that she brought nine books to the king Tarquinius Priscus, and asked for them three hundred philippics, and that the king refused so great a price, and derided the madness of the woman; that she, in the sight of the king, burnt three of the books, and demanded the same price for those which were left; that Tarquinias much more considered the woman to be mad; and that when she again, having burnt three other books, persisted in asking the same price, the king was moved, and bought the remaining books for the three hundred pieces of gold: and the number of these books was afterwards increased, after the rebuilding of the Capitol; because they were collected from all cities of Italy and Greece, and especially from those of Erythraea, and were brought to Rome, under the name of whatever Sibyl they were.
Further, that the eighth was from the Hellespont, born in the Trojan territory, in the village of Marpessus, about the town of Gergithus; and Heraclides of Pontus writes that she lived in the times of Solon and Cyrus; -- the ninth of Phrygia, who gave oracles at Ancyra;
the tenth of Tibur, by name Albunea, who is worshipped at Tibur as a goddess, near the banks of the river Anio, in the depths of which her statue is said to have been found, holding in her hand a book. The senate transferred her oracles into the Capitol.
The predictions of all these Sibyls are both brought forward and esteemed as such, except those of the Cumaean Sibyl, whose books are l concealed by the Romans; nor do they consider it lawful for them to be inspected by any one but the Quindecemviri. And them are separate books the production of each, but because these are inscribed with the name of the Sibyl they are believed to be the work of one; and they are confused, nor can the productions of each be distinguished and assigned to their own authors, except in the case of the Erythraean Sibyl, for she both inserted her own true name in her verse, and predicted that she would be called Erythraean, though she was born at Babylon. But we also shall speak of the Sibyl without any distinction, wherever we shall have occasion to use their testimonies. All these Sibyls, then, proclaim one God, and especially the Erythraean, who is regarded among the others as more celebrated and noble; since Fenestella, a most diligent writer, speaking of the Quindecemviri, says that, after the rebuilding of the Capitol, Caius Curio the consul proposed to the senate that ambassadors should be sent to Erythrae to search out and bring to Rome the writings of the Sibyl; and that, accordingly, Publius Gabinius, Marcus Otacilius, and Lucius Valerius were sent, who conveyed to Rome about a thousand verses written out by private persons.
 

Justin's Hortatory Address to the Greeks
[Translated by the Rev. M. Dods, M.a.]
Chapter XXXVII.-Of the Sibyl.
(Christian Classics Ethereal Library)

And you may in part easily learn the right religion from the ancient Sibyl, who by some kind of potent inspiration teaches you, through her oracular predictions, truths which seem to be much akin to the teaching of the prophets. She, they say, was of Babylonian extraction, being the daughter of Berosus, who wrote the Chaldaean History; and when she had crossed over (how, I know not) into the region of Campania, she there uttered her oracular sayings in a city called Cumae, six miles from Baiae, where the hot springs of Campania are found. And being in that city, we saw also a certain place, in which we were shown a very large basilica84 cut out of one stone; a vast affair, and worthy of all admiration. And they who had heard it from their fathers as part of their country's tradition, told us that it was here she used to publish her oracles. And in the middle of the basilica they showed us three receptacles cut out of one stone, in which, when filled with water, they said that she washed, and having put on her robe again, retires into the inmost chamber of the basilica, which is still a part of the one stone; and sitting in the middle of the chamber on a high rostrum and throne, thus proclaims her oracles. And both by many other writers has the Sibyl been mentioned as a prophetess, and also by Plato in his Phaedrus. And Plato seems to me to have counted prophets divinely inspired when he read her prophecies. For he saw that what she had long ago predicted was accomplished; and on this account he expresses in the Dialogue with Meno his wonder at and admiration of prophets in the following terms: "Those whom we now call prophetic persons we should rightly name divine. And not least would we say that they are divine, and are raised to the prophetic ecstasy by the inspiration and possession of God, when they correctly speak of many and important matters, and yet know nothing of what they are saying,"-plainly and manifestly referring to the prophecies of the Sibyl. For, unlike the poets who, after their poems are penned, have power to correct and polish, specially in the way of increasing the accuracy of their verse, she was filled indeed with prophecy at the time of the inspiration, but as soon as the inspiration ceased, there ceased also the remembrance of all she had said. And this indeed was the cause why some only, and not all, the metres of the verses of the Sibyl were preserved. For we ourselves, when in that city, ascertained from our cicerone, who showed us the places in which she used to prophesy, that there was a certain coffer made of brass in which they said that her remains were preserved. And besides all else which they told us as they had heard it from their fathers, they said also that they who then took down her prophecies, being illiterate persons, often went quite astray from the accuracy of the metres; and this, they said, was the cause of the want of metre in some of the verses, the prophetess having no remembrance of what she had said, after the possession and inspiration ceased, and the reporters having, through their lack of education, failed to record the metres with accuracy. And on this account, it is manifest that Plato had an eye to the prophecies of the Sibyl when he said this about prophets, for he said, "When they correctly speak of many and important matters, and yet know nothing of what they are saying."