The Sibylline Library from �Myth to History

Francis Borchardt,

NLA University College

francis.borchardt@nla.no

The Beginning: The Sibyl Burns Her Books

• Dionysius, Roman Antiquities 4.62.2-4 (1^st c. BCE)
• Pliny the Elder, Natural History 13.88 (1^st c. CE)
• Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 1.19 (2^nd c. CE)
• Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.6.10-11 (3^rd c. CE)
• Theosophy 3.29-39 (5^th c. CE)
• Sibylline Prologue 51-66 (6^th c. CE)

The Books Burn in Sulla’s Social Wars

• Dionysius, Roman Antiquities 4.62.2-4
• Pliny the Elder, Natural History 13.88
• Tacitus, Annals 6.12 (1^st c. CE)
• The Capitoline Temple, where the books are ostensibly kept, is burned in 83 BCE in the Marsian wars during Sulla’s dictatorship

The Sibyl’s Books are Destroyed Again by Augustus

• Suetonius, Life of Augustus 31.1 (2^nd c. CE)
• Augustus, becomes pontifex maximus,
• Destroys all anonymous and wrongly attributed prophecies
• Saves some of the sibylline oracles
• Places them in temple of Apollo Palatinus

The Sibyl’s Books Burn Once More

• Namatianus, De redito suo 2.52-60 (5^th c. CE)
• Stilicho, a Germanic general of Roman troops, betrays Rome and allows it to be overtaken by Germanic tribes
• He also finds the sibylline books being kept in Rome and burns them himself

Sibylline Library in Myth

• Valued
• tied to periods of momentous change in Rome/fate of the city
• subject to suspicion/attack by Roman rulers
• largely inaccessible, so contents are largely unknown/unaccounted for
• fractured remnant
• reemerges from the ashes of its destruction

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The Rise of Sibylline Text

• There is a separate tradition wherein sibylline text is centered
• Pseudepigraphic production/adaptation of sibylline books
• Use of these books in apologetic/polemic discourse
• Lactantius (3^rd c. CE)
• Theosophy (5^th c. CE)
• What’s the connection between the two traditions?

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The Ever-growing Sibylline Library

• Multiple anthologies of oracles
• Increasing number of sibylline books
• Scholarship has even created new anthologies itself
• This can all be linked to the way the mythic life of the sibylline books both sustains them and takes them away