SIBYLLA, a proper name, afterwards used as a common noun (as we say, "a Daniel") ; the derivation and meaning are unknown but certainly are not Greek; they are possibly Semitic. In the disturbed period preceding the development of the full classical culture; i.e., about 800-600 B.C., religious movements of all sorts were common in Greece and Asia Minor, and especially, inspired prophets were numerous. Of these one of the most famous was Sibylla of Marpessus, a village near Troy, also claimed as a native of Erythrae; of her Heracleitus says (Frag. 12, Bywater) that "with her maddened mouth . . . she reaches a thousand years with her voice by the power of the god"; i.e., Apollo, by whom this real or imaginary person was thought to be inspired. Numerous prophecies, generally in hexameter verse, the usual metre of Apolline oracles, were attributed to her, and her great popularity led ultimately to her multiplication, numer ous places claiming, from about the 4th century on, to be her native city, or to have been visited by her, or to be the birth place of another Sibyl of like inspiration. Varro (ap. Lactantius, divin. instit. I. 6.) gives a list of ten, which includes the famous Cumaean Sibyl, often identified with the Erythraean.
She was supposed to be the authoress of the Sibylline Oracles, which were kept in the temple of luppiter Capitolinus at Rome under the care of the quindecimviri (see ROMAN RE LIGION), and consulted in emergencies by order of the Senate.
Apollo loved her and granted her the gift of prophecy, and also a life of as many years as she had grains of dust in her hand; but she forgot to ask for youth, and so gradually withered away almost to nothing. It was presumably she who offered Tarquinius Superbus nine books of prophecies, and, on his declining to pay the price asked, burned first three and then three more, finally selling the remainder for the sum she originally demanded for all. (Ovid, Metam., xiv., 13o et seq.; Dionysius Hal. iv. 62). Of the official collection supposed thus to have originated, one or two fragments still survive (see Diels, Sibyllinische Bliitter).
Finally, Jewish and Christian apologists discovered a Judaean or Babylonian Sibyl, to whom were attributed the numerous prophecies, still extant, containing Judaeo-Christian propaganda.
See Bouche-Leclercq, Histoire de la Divination dans l'Antiquite, p. 133 et seq. ; Buchholtz in Roscher's Lexikon, s.v. ; Wissowa, Religion u. Kultus, 2nd. ed. p. 534 et seq., and authorities cited there.