Word: cumaean
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Whenever trouble brewed in ancient Rome, messengers sped south to the Cumaean Rock, a many-chambered volcanic promontory twelve miles west of Naples. Therein, "hidden far from sight within her sanctuary dark and drear, dwelt the dread Sibyl, whom the Delian seer inspired with soul and wisdom to unfold the things to come"* Complaisant with the Romans' plea the Sibyl would shuffle inscribed leaves, deal them upon her grotto floor, to be construed there by her votaries...
Another character has stepped from the pages of history into the spotlight of publicity and that none other than the Cumaean Sybil, a lady old at her trade when the glory of Rome was undimmed by northern indiscretions and Aeneas was neither pious nor peregrinating. For she was among the first to practice what W. C. Fields might well describe as--the old army game...
...tall copies of her work the quintessence of her prophecy--that is dead. For open sesames exist to Italian caves and to the heart of man--but woman, and a sybyl at that will never reveal much to the learned of the world--not a woman ancient as the Cumaean lady--and such an early exponent of the old army game...