Note 61 — Chapter IX · DIONYSIAC RELIGION IN GREECE ITS AMALGAMATION WITH APOLLINE RELIGION. ECSTATIC PROPHECY. RITUAL PURIFICATION AND EXORCISM. ASCETICISM

The Erythraean Sibyl was dated by Eusebius in Ol. 9, 3 (the absurd addition ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ belongs only to the author of the Chron. Pasc. and not to Eus.: Alexandre, p. 80); he dated the Samian in Ol. 17, 1 (it is quite arbitrary to refer this view to Eratosthenes). Acc. to Suid. Σίβυλλα Ἀπόλλωνος καὶ Λαμίας the Erythraean lived 483 years after the fall of Troy: i.e. Ol. 20, 1 (700 B.C.). Herakleides put the Phrygo-Trojan Sib. in the times of Solon and Kyros (to which Epimenides also belongs and to which Aristeas and Abaris were supposed to belong). We can no longer discover or guess at the reasons for these datings. In any case the Chronologists to whom they go back evidently regarded the Sibyls as later than the earliest Pythia at Delphi. Even the Cumaean Sibyl was not to be distinguished from the Erythraean: [Arist.] Mirab. 95, which perhaps comes from Timaeus; Varro ap. Serv. A. vi, 36; cf. D.H. 4, 62, 6. In spite of which she is a contemporary of Tarquinius Priscus (this was enough to distinguish the Cimmeria in Italia who prophesied to Aeneas from the Cumaean Sibyl: Naev. and Calp. Piso in Varro ap. Lact. 1, 6, 9). Naturally in these chronological straits recourse was had to the favourite device of such accounts—unnatural longevity. The Sibyl is πολυχρονιωτάτη [Arist.]: she lived a thousand years or thereabouts: Phleg., Macr. 4 (the oracle of this passage was also known to Plu.; cf. PO. 13, 401 B; a similar source inspires Ov., M. xiv, 132–53. In this case the Sibyl has already lived 700 years before the arrival of Aeneas, and she will live another 300, which would bring her—by a rather inexact calculation—to about the time of Tarquinius Priscus). In the verses found at Erythrae belonging to a statue of the Sibyl (Buresch, Woch. Klass. Phil. 1891, p. 1042; Ath. Mitt. 1892, p. 20), the Erythraean Sibyl is said to live 900 years—unfortunately one cannot be sure that this means till the time of the inscr. itself and of the νέος κτίστης of Erythrai in the age of the Antonines who is referred to at the close. If so the Sibyl would have been born about the year 700 B.C. (as in Suid.) or a little earlier. Perhaps, however, the lengthy period refers to the life time of the long since dead Sibyl herself, while the αὖθις δ’ ἐνθάδε ἐγὼ ἧμαι of l. 11 f. only applies to the statue. In which case the commencement and end of the Sibyl’s lifetime would be unknown.—Cumaeae saecula vatis became proverbial: Alexandre, p. 57. Finally the Sibyl was regarded as entirely forgotten by death, as in the story in Petronius 48 (cf. also—probably referring to Erythrai—Ampel., LM. viii, 15; Rh. Mus. 32, 639).