Sibylline Books
An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920)
The manuscripts which embodied the secrets of human destiny, the work of the sibyls (q.v. ) or prophetesses of the ancient world. According to Tacitus, these books were first preserved in the Capitol. When it was burnt down, the precious leaves of Fate were preserved, and removed to the temple of Apollo Palatinus. Their after-fate is enshrouded in mystery, but it would seem that the Cumean books existed until 339 A.D., when they were destroyed by Stilikon. Augustus sent three ambassadors-Paulus Gabinus, Marcus Otacillius , and Lucius Valerius-into Asia, Africa , and Italy , but especially to the Erythraean Sibyl, to collect whatever could be discovered of the Sibylline Oracles , to replace those which had been lost or burnt. The books are of two kinds ; namely, the books of the elder Sibyls, that is, of the earlier Greek and Roman times; and the later, which were much falsified, and disfigured with numerous interpolations. Of the latter, eight books in Greek and Latin are still said to be extant. Those which are preserved in Rome had been collected from various places, at various times, and contained predictions of future events couched in the most mysterious of symbolic languages. At first they were permitted only to be read by descendants of Apollo, but later by the priests, until their care was entrusted to certain officials, who only replied to inquiries at the command of the Senate, in cases of extraordinary emergency. They were two at first, and named duumviri: these were appointed by Tarquinius Superbus. Two hundred and thirteen years afterwards, ten more were appointed to their guardianship (decemviri), and Sulla increased the number to fifteen (quindecemviri.)
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The Occultism encyclopaedia of 1920 gives the burning of the books by Stilicho as 339 A.D.; the date usually accepted now is around 405, in the last years before Alaric's sack of Rome, since Stilicho was executed in 408. The bigger clarification is one the 1920 entry only gestures at when it distinguishes "elder" from "later" books: the surviving Greek hexameter texts, printed today as the Sibylline Oracles in twelve books, are not the Roman state oracles at all but a Jewish and Christian composition written between roughly the second century B.C. and the seventh A.D., and they were never in the Capitol. Otherwise the outline stands — the duumviri growing to decemviri and then to Sulla's fifteen, the consultation only at the Senate's order, the transfer to the temple of Apollo on the Palatine under Augustus in 12 B.C. — and no text of the genuine Roman books has ever been recovered.
Written for this edition, 2026.