ny a place would be ambitious to have so noble a
figure domiciled in its midst. One line of tradition referred the
original Sibyl to the Ionian Erythrae, and when the Sibylline Books were
burned in the year 83 B.C., it was to Erythrae that the Romans sent to
make a new collection of oracles. Whatever the original home of the
figure, one of the most famous of the Sibyls was she of Cumae.[1724] She
was regarded as being very old, and she was probably a permanent diviner
of that place. It was from Cumae, according to the legend, that the
Sibylline Books came to Rome. The story of how they were first offered
to King Tarquinius Priscus, who refused to pay the price, how three of
them were destroyed and then three more, and how finally the required
price was paid for the remaining three, points to a belief that the
material of the oracles had once been larger than that which came to
Rome. There is also the assertion that the utterances of the Sibyl were
at that time recorded in books. This fact suggests that oracular
responses had long been known at Cumae, and that some persons, of whose
character and functions we know nothing, had from time to time written
them down, so that a handbook of divination had come into existence.

+938+. In whatever manner the oracles were first brought to Rome it is
certain that they were accepted by the Romans in all good faith, and
they came to play a very important part in the conduct of public
affairs. They were placed in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus under the
charge of two men (_duumviri_), and later a college was established for
their guardianship. They were used in Rome especially for guidance in
national calamities: when the existence of the city was threatened by
the victorious career of Hannibal, it was the Sibyl who prescribed the
importation of the worship of the Phrygian Great Mother. It is certain
that the books were manipulated by political and religious leaders for
their own purposes, old dicta being recast and new ones inserted as
occasion required;[1725] but probably this procedure was unknown to the
people--it does not appear that it affected their faith. Even Augustine
speaks of the theurgi as daemones, and cites a passage from the Erythraean
Sibyl as a prediction of Christ.[1726]

+939+. To the poetical books which have come down to us under the name
of Jewish Sibylline Oracles no value attaches for the history of the
Sibyl except so far as they are an indication of the