Cumae and the Sibyl: the prophetess of the Phlegraean Fields
The Cumaean Sibyl between myth and archaeology: Aeneas in the sixth book of the Aeneid, Ovid's curse, Petronius' mockery and the cave found in 1932.
On the coast of the Phlegraean Fields, north of Naples, lie the ruins of Cumae, regarded by the ancients as the oldest Greek colony on the Italian mainland. Founded in the eighth century BC by settlers from Chalcis, on the island of Euboea, the city became famous throughout the Roman world for its Sibyl, the prophetess inspired by Apollo whom Virgil had Aeneas consult.
The Sibyl of the Aeneid
The sixth book of the Aeneid is the most famous source. Aeneas, having landed at Cumae, climbs to the temple of Apollo and meets the Sibyl Deiphobe, daughter of Glaucus. Virgil describes a vast cave cut into the side of the cliff, with a hundred wide openings and a hundred doors from which as many voices pour out. When the god possesses her, the prophetess's face changes colour, her hair is thrown into disorder and her breast heaves, while her voice no longer seems that of a mortal.
It is the Sibyl who guides Aeneas in his descent to the Underworld, after the hero has plucked the golden bough. Already in the third book the seer Helenus had warned Aeneas that the maiden of Cumae wrote the fates on leaves, which the wind could scatter before anyone gathered them in the right order.
A forgotten youth
Ovid, in the Metamorphoses, records another tradition. Apollo, in love with the Sibyl, promised her any gift; she asked to live as many years as there were grains of sand in her hand, but forgot to ask for youth as well. Having rejected the god's love, she was condemned to grow old for centuries, slowly wasting away until she was reduced, in her own words, to a voice.
Petronius, in the Satyricon, pushes the image to grotesque extremes. The rich freedman Trimalchio claims to have seen with his own eyes the Sibyl of Cumae hanging inside a jar. When the boys asked her in Greek what she wanted, she replied: “I want to die.” The joke, put in the mouth of a vulgar and vain character, shows how widespread the legend was in first-century Rome.
The cave discovered in 1932
In 1932 the archaeologist Amedeo Maiuri uncovered, beneath the acropolis of Cumae, a long gallery with a trapezoidal cross-section cut into the tuff, lit by side openings facing the sea and ending in an inner chamber. Maiuri recognised in it the cave described by Virgil, and the place is still known to everyone as the Cave of the Sibyl.
The identification is not universally accepted. Several scholars believe the gallery began as a military or defensive work, later adapted in subsequent periods, and that its date does not necessarily match that of the oracular cult. The debate remains open, but the charm of the place is undiminished, and the walk through the gallery's half-light still draws visitors.
Cumae also tied its name to the history of Rome: according to a widespread tradition, it was the Cumaean Sibyl who sold King Tarquin the prophetic books later kept on the Capitol. Between myth, literature and archaeology, the prophetess of the Phlegraean Fields remains one of the most vivid figures of ancient divination.