ABSTRACT
The earliest references to the Sibyls of Ancient Greece are tantalizingly brief. However, despite their brevity they do suggest a tradition that was fi rmly established by the sixth century BCE.1 The fi rst recorded reference discovered thus far is from a quotation in Plutarch’s Moralia: “Oracles at Delphi” (or De Pythiae Oraculis) referring to a comment by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus (c. 500 BCE): “the Sibyl ‘with frenzied lips,’ as Heraclitus has it, ‘uttering words mirthless, unembellished, unperfumed, yet reaches to a thousand years with her voice through the god.’”2 This portrait of the frenzied Sibylline prophetess would be reproduced well into the seventeenth century. Certainly, by the fi fth century BCE the Sibyl was so well recognized as a fi gure that she appears often. Euripides (c. 480-406 BCE) featured a Sibyl in a now lost tragedy,3 and Aristophanes includes a Sibyl in at least two of his comedies, Equites and Pax. Plato attests to the reverence with which the Sibyl was held, commenting in Phaedrus that the “Sibyl and others, who by practising heavenly-inspired divination have foretold many future things accurately.”4
