The Sixth Sibylline Oracle as a Literary Hymn

In 1856 c. alexandre ¹ remarked that the twenty-eight-line poem that comprises Book 6 of the Oracula Sibyllina is “not so much a prophecy as a hymn, and, apart from the meter, nearly a lyric.” ² Subsequent commentators have used the term “hymn” to characterize Book 6, but no one has provided a formal literary analysis of the book as such, or tried to classify it within a larger hymnic tradition. ³ The following study is offered toward that end.