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The three most famous sibyls were the Delphic, the Erythraean and the Cumaean.
The oracle at Delphi was commonly known as Sibyl, though her name was also Herophile.. She was the Pythian priestess of an archaic chthonic serpent. Later, Sibyl or Pythia became a title given to whichever priestess manned the oracle at the time. The Sibyl sat on the Sibylline Rock, breathing in vapors from the ground and eating laurel leaves, gaining her often puzzling predictions from that. She sang her predictions, which she received from Gaia, in an ecstatic swoon; her utterings were interpreted by attendant priests during classical times, and rendered into hexameters of notoriously difficult interpretation. Pausanias claimed that the Sibyl was "born between man and goddess, daughter of sea monsters and an immortal nymph". Others said she was sister or daughter to Apollo. Still others claimed the Sibyl received her powers from Gaia originally, who passed the oracle to Thetis, who passed it to Phoebe.
The Erythraean Sibyl was located on the coast of Ionia opposite the island of Chios.
The Sibyl who most concerned the Romans was the Cumaean Sibyl near the Greek city of Naples, whom Aeneas consulted before his descent to the lower world (Aeneid book VI: 10). It was she who sold to Tarquinius Superbus, the last king of Rome, the original Sibylline books (q.v.). Christians were especially impressed with the Cumaean Sibyl too, for in Vergil's Fourth Eclogue she foretells the coming of a savior, a flattering reference to the poet's patron, whom Christians identified as Jesus.
The sayings of sibyls and oracles were notoriously open to interpretation (compare Nostradamus) and were constantly used for both civil and cult propaganda.
The oldest collection of written Sibylline oracles appears to have been made about the time of Solon and Cyrus at Gergis on Mount Ida in the Troad. The sibyl, who was born near there, at Marpessus, and whose tomb was later marked by the temple of Apollo, appears on the coins of Gergis, ca 400- 350 BCE. (cf. Phlegon, quoted in the 5th century geographical dictionary of Stephanus of Byzantium, under 'Gergis'). Other places claimed to have been her home. 'The sibylline collection at Gergis was attributed to the Hellespontine Sibyl and was preserved in the temple of Apollo at Gergis. Thence it passed to Erythrae, where it became famous. It was this very collection, it would appear, which found its way to Cumae and from Cumae to Rome. Gergis, a city of Dardania in Troas, a settlement of the ancient Teucri, and, consequently, a town of very great antiquity ( Herodotus iv: 122). Gergis, according to Xenophon, was a place of much strength. It had a temple sacred to Apollo Gergithius, and was said to have given birth to the Sibyl, who is sometimes called Erythraea, from Erythrae, a small place on Mount Ida (Dion. Hal. i. 55), and at others Gergithia ('of Gergis')
Some genuine Sibylline verses are preserved in the Book of Marvels of Phlegon of Tralles (2nd century CE)
See also Sibylline books.
When Sibyl is taken for a woman's name, it is commonly spelled Sybil (q.v.).