SHROVE-TUES'DAY, the Tuesday after Quinquagesima Sunday, or the day immediately preceding the first of Lent ; being so called from the Saxon word shrine, to confess ; that day having been employed by the people in confessing their sins to the parish priest, and there by qualifying themselves for a more re ligious observance of the approaching fast.
s trm.s. in antiquity, certain women who pretended to be endowed with a pro phetic spirit. They resided in various parts of Persia, Greece, and Italy ; and were consulted on all important occasions. They delivered oracular answers, and, as it is pretended, wrote certain prophecies on leaves in verse, which are called Sibylline verses ; but these Sibylline oracles seem to have been composed to answer political purposes. The number of Sibyls, according to Varro, was ten. SIBYLLINE BOOKS, documents sup posed to contain the fate of the Roman empire. Nine of them are said to have been offered by an old woman, called. Amalthtea, to Tarquin the Proud ; but Tarquin refusing to give the price she asked, she went away, and burned three of them. Returning with the remainder,
she offered them to the king on the same terms as. before ; and, on his second re fusal, departed again, and returned with three, which she still offered at the SUMO price as the original nine. The king, struck with her conduct, at last acceded to her offer, and entrusted the care of the books to certain priests. They were pre served in a stone chest beneath the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and were consulted in times of public danger or calamity. They were destroyed by the fire that con sented the Capitol in the Marsic war. After this calamity, ambassadors were sent to collect such fragments of Sibylline prophecies as they could pick up in various countries ; and from the verses thus collected Augustus formed two new books, which were deposited in two gilt cases in the temple of the Palatine Apol lo. Sit ylline verses are often lin Uml by Christian writers, as containing prophe cies of Christianity ; but these arc spu rious a forgery of the second century