Word: sibyl
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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...
Much of Rome's early history was shaped by the Sibyl's dictates, whose records eventually filled nine Sibylline Books. Tarquin the Proud (534-510 B. C.), last of Rome's legendary Kings, wanted to buy the Books but refused to pay the great sum the Sibyl demanded. She destroyed six of the sacred nine. When he paid the original price for the remaining three and took them to Rome, Romans no longer had to make a long journey to learn what they wanted to do. The Cumaean Sibyl and her grotto lapsed into a legend—until...
...main passageway was a large, natural rock room with three big niches. The niches apparently afforded living quarters for the Sibyl and her servants. The large room must have been her audience chamber. (Virgil refers to its concavity.) From that chamber radiated three small passageways leading to three pools where the Sibyl bathed before going through her leafy mysteries. Dr. Maiuri, delighted by the reality of what for 2,400 years had been deemed legend, stood silent, heard naught but the clop clop of water dripping from the crevices of the Cumaean Rock...
...SIBYL...
What Christian Scientists have objected to in all but the authorized life of Mrs. Eddy (The Life of Mary Baker Eddy by Sibyl Wilbur) are alleged misstatements, "obnoxious," libelous, about the founder of Christian Science. Author Dakin's book says that Mary Baker Eddy plagiarized, took morphine, made no miraculous cures...