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[edit] Ancient Roman prophecies

The story of the acquisition of the Sibylline Books by Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the semi-legendary last king of the Roman Kingdom, or Tarquinius Priscus, is one of the famous mythic elements of Roman history.[1]

Centuries ago, concurrent with the 50th Olympiad and the Founding of the City of Rome, an old woman "who was not a native of the country" (Dionysius) arrived incognita in Rome. She offered nine books of prophecies to King Tarquin; and as the king declined to purchase them, owing to the exorbitant price she demanded, she burned three and offered the remaining six to Tarquin at the same stiff price the very next day. She threatened that if she did get this price that she would burn three more and again three more the following day. Tarquin then relented and purchased the last six at the full original price, whereupon she "disappeared from among men" (Dionysius). The books were found to contain the entire destiny of Rome.[2]

The books were thereafter kept in the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill, Rome, to be consulted only in emergencies. The temple burned down in the 80s BC, and the books with it, necessitating a re-collection of Sibylline prophecies from all parts of the empire (Tacitus 6.12). These were carefully sorted and those determined to be legitimate were saved in the rebuilt temple. The Emperor Augustus had them moved to the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine Hill, where they remained for most of the remaining Imperial Period.

The Books were burned in AD 405 by the General Flavius Stilicho, who was a Christian and regarded the books as Pagan and therefore "evil". At the time of the Visigothic invasion five years later in AD 410, certain Pagan apologists bemoaned the loss of the books, claiming that the invasion of the city was evidence of the wrath of the Pagan gods over the destruction of the books.



  1. ^ Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities IV.62 (repeated by Aulus Gellius I.19); Varro, according to a remark in Lactantius I.6; Pliny's Natural History]] XIII.27; none of these historians claim that the old woman selling the books was the Cumaean Sibyl, a connection that grew up later.
  2. ^ Virginia Brown's translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Famous Women, pp. 50 - 52; Harvard University Press 2001; ISBN 0-674-01130-9