he
traditional date of the temple we may put it any time between 509 and
496.

I have purposely used vague terms, such as Sibylline _influence_,
instead of speaking in the old manner of Sibylline _books_ or oracles,
because it is almost incredible that at so early a date it could have
been possible to divulge any contents of a store of writings such as
must have been most carefully treasured and concealed. This has been
shown conclusively to be out of the question in Diels' now famous little
book "_Sibylline Leaves_." But we may also follow Diels in assuming that
about the end of the sixth century some kind of Greek oracle or oracular
saying did actually arrive at Rome, purporting to be an utterance of the
famous Sibyl of Cumae.[537]

But what _was_ this Sibylline influence which thus penetrated to Rome,
if I am right, at the beginning of the fifth century? It is no part of
my design to discuss the history of Greek mysticism, though we shall
hear something more of it in a later lecture. It will be enough to
remind you that in the sixth century Greece was not only full of Orphism
and Pythagoreanism, but of floating oracular _dicta_ believed to emanate
from a mystic female figure, a weird figure of whom it is hard to say
how far she was human or divine; and of whose origin we know nothing,
except that her original home was, as we might expect, Asia Minor. She
was inspired by Apollo,[538] it was said, like the Pythia, and like her
too became [Greek: entheos] (_possessed_) when uttering her prophecies;
this is the earliest fact we know about her, for a famous fragment of
Heracleitus represents her as uttering sayings "with frenzied
lips,"[539]--a tradition of which Virgil has made good use in the sixth
_Aeneid_:

non vultus, non color unus,
non comptae mansere comae; sed pectus anhelum,
et rabie fera corda tument.

But more to our purpose is the sober judgment of Plato a century after
the first Roman experience of her, who in the _Phaedrus_ classes her
among those who have wrought _much good_ by their inspired
utterances.[540] This passage may help us to understand how ready men
were at that time to turn for aid in tribulation to what they believed
to be divine help, to an inspired wisdom beyond the range of the local
deities of their own city-states.

This Sibyl became gradually localised in certain Greek cities, and
thereby broke up, as it were, into several Sibyls. One of these
Sibylline h