“Vergil and Homer opened my Books:” The Sibylline Oracles and the non-Jewish canon

Abstract

The hybrid cultural weave of the Sibylline Oracles is one of the most arresting aspects of a collection which preserves Judaeo-Christian compositions in Greek ranging from c. second century BCE to the seventh century CE. Reviewing world history in the form of prophecy, sketching rewards and punishments due at the end of days, and urging ethical behavior, these oracles in Homerizing hexameters combine Classical and Biblical traditions and are attributed to an ancient Sibyl. This article focuses on a distinctive case of repetition within the Sibylline corpus to highlight how the sense of a Classical canon is updated in the Jewish development of this prophetic genre. The passages triggering both intertextual and intratextual investigation ar Sibylline Oracles 3.419–25, which “predicts” that the blind Homer will be the first to open the Sibylline books and copy her tale of Troy, and the far less studied Sibylline Oracles 11.163–71, where phrases about Homer are revised to produce an emphasis on Vergil’s skill as a poet and discretion in concealing the Sibylline writings until his death. Study of these lines in their immediate and wider narrative contexts reveals the Jewish sibyllists exploiting the literary knowledge of Classically-educated readers, first and foremost in order to build up the Sibylline authority, a priority which is developed through both “combative” and “parasitic” stances in relation to canonical authors. Overall, this study offers new information about modes of allusion in Jewish Greek literature and the relationship between the tracks of Homeric and Vergilian reception in cross-cultural contexts.

“Vergil and Homer opened my Books:” The Sibylline Oracles and the non-Jewish canon

Introduction: Sibylline compilations

The hybrid cultural weave of the Sibylline Oracles is one of the most arresting aspects of a collection which preserves Judaeo-Christian compositions in Greek ranging from c. second century BCE to the seventh century CE. Reviewing world history in the form of prophecy, sketching rewards and punishments due at the end of days, and urging ethical behavior, these oracles in Homerizing hexameters combine Classical and Biblical traditions and are attributed to an ancient Sibyl. This article focuses on a distinctive case of repetition within the Sibylline corpus to highlight how the sense of a Classical canon is updated in the Jewish development of this prophetic genre. ¹

Thus far, studies in the intertextual practices of the Jewish and Christian “Sibyllists” (the anonymous composers of Sibylline Oracles) have focused on features such as the use of pagan and Septuagintal epithets for divinities, ² or the combination of Greek myths, such as the Titanomachy, with Biblical narratives, of the Flood or the Tower of Babel, to re-orient both prehistory and historical patterning to monotheistic ends. ³ Above all, we see that the Sibyllists draw upon multiple backgrounds for a trademark feature of this branch of Sibylline prophecy, which is to “predict,” from a prehistorical or otherwise elevated vantage-point, the course of human history divided into periods of races or empires. ⁴

Of the 12 “Books” of Sibylline Oracles that we possess, ⁵ Book 3, which contains the oldest material in the collection (second century BCE), and Books 1 and 5, (?first-second centuries CE, Book 5 containing very little definitely Christian material), have been singled out as the most relevant sections of the corpus for scholars exploring the Sibyl’s intertextual engagement with “cosmogonical and eschatological legends;” these are also the Books that are closest to the form of Homeric epic. ⁶ Jane Lightfoot’s detailed work on Books 1–2 in context of the Sibylline collection has further highlighted the variety in allusive texture between different oracles and differences between Sibylline forms of reference to Classical and Biblical traditions. Highlighted in Lightfoot’s close analysis are some remarkable sections in Book 3 of “high-density borrowing,” amounting to Sibylline “verse paraphrase” of passages of Genesis, Deuteronomy, Ezekiel and Isaiah: ⁷ Biblical material provides the “plots,” while Homeric epic provides the meter, lexicon, “isolated motifs” and line-ending formulae by which the Sibyllists poetically expand on their sources. ⁸ By contrast, no such sustained “tracking” of particular narratives found only in non-Jewish sources is commonly detected in the extant Sibylline corpus. Scattered evidence of Sibylline “intertextual” engagement with Homeric and Hesiodic poetry points rather to Sibylline creative freedom to shuffle and adapt features of those narratives at the core of Hellenizing education throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. Lightfoot finds that “the Sibyl simultaneously employs different kinds of allusion, those proper to both of the traditions in which she is writing.” ⁹ The present article follows up the point by exploring a more self-conscious dimension of Sibylline allusion and intertext with the non-Jewish canon.

The Sibylline use of Greek mythology, clearly at its most intense in Books 3 and 1, has raised questions about the balance of its Jewish composers’ antagonism or rapprochement with the cultural prestige of archaic Greek epic traditions. Most recently, Ashley Bacchi’s work on Book 3 has emphasized the embeddedness of the earliest Jewish Sibyllists, who were probably based in Alexandria, in contemporary Hellenistic trends toward politicizing the mythological landscape inherited from the archaic Greek poets. ¹⁰ Bacchi takes up from Erich Gruen the term “expropriation” to express the idea of simultaneous Sibylline appropriation and subversion. ¹¹ However, Lightfoot, in her analysis of the texture of Sibylline Oracles 1–2, ultimately denies that either polemic or desire for compatibility should win out as keys to reading the later and more developed Sibylline versions of prehistory. Lightfoot puts the accent rather on ways in which Books 1–2 refer back to and amplify the beginning-to-end structure of Book 3 and its rooting of the Sibyl in universal history. The original “anchor” is found in the “signature” to Book 3 which presents the Sibyl as a close relative of Noah, a biographical note taken up in Book 1 (cf. Sib. Or. 3.823–7 with 1.288–90). As a co-survivor of the Flood, this figure of the Sibyl dates from a period prior to division of human race into Jews and Gentiles, claiming the authority to address both. ¹²

This article builds on Lightfoot’s insight that the use of “pagan” sources in the Sibylline Oracles within and beyond Book 3 is invested first and foremost in building up the Sibylline authority, a priority which is developed through both “combative” and “parasitic” stances in relation to Classical traditions. What the surviving corpus of Sibylline Oracles preserves, without parallel in extant Jewish-Greek literature, is a sense of the centuries-long growth and development of a new form of expression with a distinctive voice (despite the flexibility of its features and its concerns). ¹³ In this process an important guide is the re-use of Sibylline lines in new contexts. While we cannot often pin down the dates of specific oracles, we can deduce, for example, that Books 1–2, 8 and 11 reuse lines of Book 3, Book 12 draws on Book 5, and Book 7 on Book 2. ¹⁴

What I want to suggest is that a view of the Sibylline collection as a continually self-assertive project offers a framework for understanding Sibylline practices of reference to non-Jewish traditions. The question I now pursue concerns the relationship between Classical intertexts and intratexts in the Sibylline corpus. “Intertextuality” refers to the complex interrelationship between a text and other texts taken as basic to the creation or interpretation of the text. ¹⁵ Further in this vein, “intratextuality” has been defined by a Classicist as “involving . . . the relations between parts and the whole” as discerned by readers, rather than with emphasis on the creator. ¹⁶ In practice, so far, intratextuality has proved illuminating of, primarily, the dynamics of highly “constructed,” single-authored Roman poetry. ¹⁷ The multi-authored, centuries-long collection of Sibylline Oracles offers different terrain for this approach, whose language encourages consideration of the Roman-ruled Jewish Sibyllists as readers of the Hellenistic foundations of their genre. We will draw out new significance from a distinctively intratextual passage in the understudied Book 11, presumed from its references to Joseph, Moses, and Solomon, and repeatedly anti-Egyptian contents, to be of first century CE Jewish authorship. ¹⁸ Close readings of both its source passage in Book 3 and this Book 11 passage in their immediate contexts bring out the author-construction of the Sibylline Oracles as a figure highly aware of her own passage through antiquity and interaction with non-Jewish traditions, both Sibylline and not.

“Homer copied my books”

The fall of Troy is distinctive among the non-Jewish mythological themes treated more than once in our Sibylline collection. On the two occasions in which the event is prophesied in some detail, it is followed up by a passage about a particular author-figure. The first such reference is found right at the center of Sibylline Oracles 3, within a longer set of oracles (3.350–488) judged by their anti-Roman sentiments and allusive references to (e.g.) Italian civil wars to have been inserted most likely in the first century BCE. ¹⁹ First, the Sibyl predicts distress and never-ending fame for Trojans caused by a very beautiful and famous “Fury . . . in Sparta” (3.413–18). ²⁰ Immediately following these lines is a prophecy of the existence and work of Homer, a “false writer” with two major titles for his thoughts, who will be the first to open the Sibyl’s books and master her style: ²¹

καί τις ψευδογράϕος πρέσβυς βροτὸς ἔσσεται αὖτις

ψευδόπατρις· δύσει δὲ ϕάος ἐν ὀπῇσιν ἑῇσιν·

νοῦν δὲ πολὺν καὶ ἔπος διανοίαις ἔμμετρον ἕξει,

οὐνόμασιν δυσὶ μισγόμενον· Χῖον δὲ καλέσσει

αὑτὸν καὶ γράψει τὰ κατ’ Ἴλιον, οὐ μὲν ἀληθῶς,

ἀλλὰ σοϕῶς· ἐπέων γὰρ ἐμῶν μέτρων τε κρατήσει·

πρῶτος γὰρ χείρεσσιν ἐμὰς βίβλους ἀναπλώσει·

And then there will be a certain false writer, an elderly mortal

of feigned fatherland. The light will go out in his eyes.

Great intelligence will he have, and speech fitting his thoughts

mingled under two names; he shall call himself a Chian

and write the story of Ilium, not truthfully, but

cleverly. For he will master my words and meters,

since he first will open my books with his hands.

Sibylline Oracles 3.419–25

Having identified Homer in an allusive (oracular) fashion by the traditions of his blindness and the claim of provenance from Chios, the narrator proceeds to complain about Homer’s creating gods to stand beside his “empty-headed” heroes (3.426–30).

This boldly anachronistic passage spins the Sibylline dependence on Homeric “words and meters” in a direction that has been taken as evidence both of cultural convergence and of antagonism. It initially raises loose comparisons with other Hellenistic Jewish Greek literature asserting (for example) Moses’ teaching of canonical Greek authors. ²² However, the so-called “Second Sophistic,” Imperial-era Greek literary context has also been invoked for the Sibyl’s labeling of Homer as a “false writer” and correcting his account of what happened at Troy. ²³ More specifically, the passage suggests a self-conscious awareness of similarities between Homer and the Sibyl as constructed author-figures whose “books” were crafted following long- and far-circulating oral traditions, and whose cult sites proliferated throughout the Mediterranean world. The multiplicity of local claims to be the birthplace of Homer or the grotto of the Sibyl ²⁴ is the most readily understandable reference of the Sibylline coinage ψευδόπατρις in 3.420, as well as the use of βροτός in v.419, which counters the increasing tendency to regard Homer as divine. Such comparison of the “biographies” of these figures is prompted by reading this passage in combination with the concluding “signature” to Sibylline Oracles 3, in which the Sibyl acknowledges various geographic and other identifications (3.813–14: “The Greeks will call me shameful one, born of Erythrae . . .”) ²⁵ but denies their validity. Within that catalog of misleading appellations, further, Homer’s Odyssey may have inspired the idea, not known from any other source, of the Sibyl as “born of Circe as mother and Gnostos as father” (3.815). ²⁶

Undoubtedly, the prediction of Homer signals a pointed cultural rivalry in the moment: how (far) this unusual passage illuminates the wider intertextual practice of the Sibyl in this or other books is harder to determine. Book 3’s prediction of Troy’s fall, which foregrounds the destructive power of the “Fury [who] will sprout in Sparta,” is distinctly post-Homeric in its negative emphasis on Helen, ²⁷ but the prediction of Homer’s writing does seem to cue attention to several intertextual relations with the Iliad earlier in this passage. ²⁸ Certainly, Sibylline cross-reference with Iliadic lines concerning the aftermath of the Trojan War would sharpen the Sibyl’s following assertion that Homer copied the Sibyl’s words and meters, while her own perspective is consciously longer and wider than that of the Homeric poems.

One Sibylline mechanism for putting Homer in his place is, as I have argued elsewhere, to bring a more “cosmic” perspective to Homeric foci through “Hesiodic” themes and emphases, although in versions that have come a long way from Hesiod. ²⁹ One such example is the account in Sibylline Oracles 3 of the fall of Troy itself, for it is framed by eight lines about a warning sign for the Trojans, described as “the abominable race of Rhea, an everlasting sprout in the earth” (3.402–4). Such a framing links the entire Trojan War with the Sibyl’s earlier, Euhemerist-inspired retelling of the Titanomachy in this book, which had concluded not only with the imprisonment of the Titans in the earth (3.151) but, as a consequence of re-envisioning of the Titans as primeval mortals, a striking emphasis on the succession myth as the origin of war for mortals (3.154–5). ³⁰ Referring back to that post-Hesiodic mythological context helps the Sibyl to expose the limitations of Homer’s “utterly false writing about empty-headed men” (3.430).

Another telling set of interactions with iconic lines of the Iliad may be detected in this Sibylline oracle’s transition from its frame (the warning sign of the earthquake in Phrygia) to a focus on the Trojan War:

σήματα δ’ οὐκ ἀγαθοῖο, κακοῖο δὲ ϕύσεται ἀρχή.

παμϕύλου πολέμοιο δαήμονας ἕξει ³¹ ἄνακτας,

Αἰνεάδας δὲ διδοῦσ’ αὐτόχθονας, ³² ἐγγενὲς αἷμα.

ἀλλὰ μεταῦτις ἕλωρ ἔσῃ ἀνθρώποισιν ἐρασταῖς.

Ἴλιον, οἰκτείρω σε· κατὰ Σπάρτην γὰρ Ἐρινύς

βλαστήσει . . .

The signs will be the beginning not of good, but of evil.

It [Phrygia] will have princes who are knowledgeable in the war of all tribes,

Producing native descendants of Aeneas, kindred blood.

But thereafter you will be prey to people who are lovers.

Ilium, I pity you. For a Fury will sprout in Sparta . . .

Sibylline Oracles 3.410–15

The first two lines set up the Phrygian region for success through the expertise of its leadership in war and the descendants of Aeneas, before the Sibyl applies to Troy a twist on the Homeric image of “prey” familiar first from the proem of the Iliad (the bodies of heroes as prey for dogs and birds, Iliad 1.4–5). The progression of thought here is open to several interpretations. Prediction of disaster for Phrygia followed by pity for Ilium first suggests the Fall of Troy as a reference point in v.413, and ἀνθρώποισιν ἐρασταῖς has consequently been interpreted either as a reference to the avenging Menelaus and Agamemnon, or to Helen and Paris. ³³ However, unless we take the Sibyl as deliberately confounding chronology, ³⁴ the adverb μεταῦτις in 413 makes it difficult to read the punchline as a reference to the fall of Troy “after” the production of “native descendants of Aeneas” (3.412), and so “people who are lovers” could well refer to the greedy Romans (so castigated at Sibylline Oracles 3.447) who incorporated Phrygia into the province of Asia in the late second century BCE. ³⁵

We should note that the prophecy in vv.411–12 also has a heritage going back to the Iliad—in Poseidon’s striking intervention on behalf of Aeneas, in Iliad 20, predicting his fated rule over the Trojans:

νῦν δὲ δὴ Αἰνείαο βίη Τρώεσσιν ἀνάξει

καὶ παίδων παῖδες, τοί κεν μετόπισθε γένωνται.

Now the strength of Aeneas will rule over the Trojans

And his children’s children, who afterwards will be born.

Homer Iliad 20.307–8

Peter Smith has shown that ancient interpretations of these two lines as the Iliad’s only post-eventum prophecy, functioning as propaganda for dynasties in the Troad in the eighth century BCE claiming descent from Aeneas, arose in a period of resentment against Roman domination in Asia Minor and increasing Roman self-advertisement as the descendant and successor of Troy. ³⁶ From the context of Rome’s claim to “Phyrgian” origin, elsewhere reflected both positively and negatively in Sib. Or. 3, most modern interpreters understand Sibylline Oracles 3.411–12 to be referring to the Romans. ³⁷ Still, there remains the possibility of reading these lines as another contemporary testimony from the Greek East of an implicit challenge to the Roman succession narrative, one which then signals the validity of its interpretation through the Sibyl’s following, backhanded invocation of Homer as cultural authority. ³⁸ At the very least, we can say that the Sibyllist reconstructs the Iliadic line as a post-eventum prophecy in some degree, and in that sense is anticipating the Sibyl’s claim that Homer copied her own trademark mode of utterance.

This is, however, not the end of the significance of this Sibylline prediction within the Sibylline Oracles, for later Sibyllists themselves then reread and adapted the Book 3 passages on Troy and Homer to new ends. We now turn to one of the most striking and extended instances of intratextuality in the Sibylline corpus.

“Vergil copied my books”

The only other place in this Sibylline corpus to make detailed reference to the fate of Troy is found in Book 11, whose date is estimated to be at the earliest around the start of the first century CE. Several oracles in this book are markedly hostile to Egypt, so the default presumption is of Jewish authorship, in the wake of hostility to Jews in Alexandria in the first half of the first century. ³⁹

Sibylline Oracles 11 recapitulates Biblical prehistory and the interaction of empires as far as Solomon’s building of the Temple (11.87), before a “digression” about Romulus and Remus (11.109–21) and then a significant oracle on the Trojan War (11.122–62) and another on Vergil (11.163–71). Following this, a brief passage compresses all Classical-era Greek history up to the advent of Alexander the Great, whose rise and legacy, the rule of Cleopatra, and Julius Caesar’s conquest of Egypt, then form the remaining subjects of the book. Book 11 does not delve into any Greek myths other than the Trojan War, although, like other oracles of the corpus, it is composed throughout in Homerizing hexameters and the verses are constructed in part from Homeric and Hesiodic phraseology.

Although reprising aspects of the Trojan War prophecy in Sibylline Oracles 3 (mentioning, for example, the “Fury from Sparta”), the version in Book 11 is greatly expanded toward aspects of the aftermath. Features not mentioned in Book 3 include: reference to the Wooden Horse (11.135–7), Agamemnon’s success in destroying Troy (with possible reference to the prior sacrifice of Iphigenia ⁴⁰ ) but also his doomed return (11.130–2, 141–2) and above all attention to the fate of Aeneas. Verses detail Aeneas’ lineage (11.144–5), his escape with his family from Troy (11.146–54), his founding of Rome (“the mighty city of the Latins,” 11.155), his death (11.156–7), and the future rule of his race as far as the Euphrates and Tigris rivers (157–61). ⁴¹ At this point comes a close revision of the passage in Book 3 predicting that another elderly individual will copy Sibyl’s work:

καί τις πρέσβυς ἀνὴρ σοϕὸς ἔσσεται αὖτις ἀοιδός,

ὃν πάντες καλέουσι σοϕώτατον ἐν μερόπεσσιν,

οὗ κόσμος πραπίδεσσιν ὅλος παιδεύσεται ἐσθλαῖς·

γράψει γὰρ κεϕάλαια * ˘ - δύναμίν τ’ ἐπίνοιαν*.

καί τε σαϕῶς γράψει μάλ’ ἀθέσϕατα ἄλλοτε ἄλλῃ ⁴²

τοῖσιν ἐμοῖσι λόγοις μέτροις ἐπέεσσι κρατήσας·

αὐτὸς γὰρ πρώτιστος ἐμὰς βίβλους ἀναπλώσει

καὶ κρύψει μετὰ ταῦτα καὶ ἀνδράσιν οὐκέτι δείξει

ἐς τέλος οὐλομένου θανάτου, βιότοιο τελευτῆς.

And there will be a certain elderly wise man, a bard in his turn,

whom all call the wisest among articulate mortals,

by whose excellent skill all the world will be educated:

For he will write the headlines * ˘—power and purpose*

and in different ways at different times will write clearly really inexpressible things

having mastered my stories, meters and utterances:

For he as the very first will open my books

and will hide them afterwards and no longer show them to men

Until the goal of wretched death, the end of life.

Sibylline Oracles 11.163–71

While reprising Book 3’s oracle on Homer, ⁴³ the notable differences in the present passage, in the context of the preceding focus on Aeneas, point rather to Vergil, as Alfons Kurfess explained over 60 years ago. ⁴⁴ Gone are Book 3’s references to a blind mortal, false homeland, and work collected under two names, along with any reference to tales of heroes such as Hector. Rather, we find emphasis on the universally acknowledged wisdom (ὃν πάντες καλέουσι σοφώτατον) and skill (πραπίδεσσιν ὅλος παιδεύσεται ἐσθλαῖς) of this bard, on the significance and depth of his writings (κεφάλαια taken as “major events;” ἐπίνοιαν and σαφῶς γράψει μάλ’ ἀθέσφατα are obscure but indicate poetic purpose and magnitude in subject), his priority in opening the Sibyl’s books (πρώτιστος 169), and his subsequently hiding them until his death (170–1).

Our transmitted text, despite its difficulties, ⁴⁵ clearly works to “update” the Sibylline self-construction of authority in relation to non-Jewish cultural icons. It makes better sense when read intratextually (i.e. with an eye to its model in Sibylline Oracle 3.419–25) than when considered as a standalone prophecy. Verses 11.166–7, whatever they precisely denote about Vergil or the Aeneid, seem to be composed to recall and contrast with the description of Homer’s writings in the Book 3 passage as somewhat sophistic (“he will write the history of Ilium, not truthfully, but cleverly”). The implied comparison puts a new angle on the reputation of Vergil’s Aeneid as an “instant classic.” ⁴⁶ Other later Greek poetry testifies that Vergil is a successful rival to Homer, ⁴⁷ but according to the Jewish Sibyllists, the field in which Vergil surpasses Homer is not epic poetry, but Sibylline prophecy, because Vergil was actually the very first to access the Sibyl’s words and meters.

The passage’s concluding point about hiding the books until death (11.170–1) recalls on one level the contemporary biographical tradition of Vergil on his deathbed wanting the Aeneid to be burned, only to be overruled by his executors and Augustus himself. ⁴⁸ However, it also constructs Vergil as a Jewish apocalypticist “hiding” Sibylline writings. ⁴⁹ And when preceded by the Sibyl’s idea of Vergil’s mastering her stories (11.168, with an odd use of the dative), it is plausibly based on an idea within Vergil’s poetry. Kurfess points to Aeneid 6, in which the Cumaean Sibyl leads Aeneas to the underworld, and in return for her revelations, Aeneas promises to transcribe and enshrine the Sibyl’s utterances (Aeneid 6.72–3: hic ego namque tuas sortis arcanaque fata / dicta meae genti ponam . . ., verses that link the Aeneas-legend with the pagan Roman Libri Sibyllini). ⁵⁰ In these lights, the Jewish Sibylline passage presents Vergil’s poem as a “faithful copy” of Sibylline wisdom, rather than a plagiarism.

Although the context of oracles about Rome’s prehistory, the fall of Troy and the imperial future of Aeneas’ descendants initially suggests Vergil qua poet of the Aeneid as the referent of this passage, there is a case for cross-reference to a different Vergilian poem that displays mastery of “[Sibylline] meters and utterances”. This is Vergil’s Fourth Eclogue (produced in the consulship of Pollio, 40 BCE), which in its opening lines cites the “Cumaean Sibyl” for the view that we are concluding a series of world ages. Whether or not a fictional citation, it was this poem’s description of an imminent fantastic golden age of peace, adopting Sibylline spondaic rhythms and internal rhymes, as well as details strikingly reminiscent of Sib. Or. 3.785–95 (itself drawing heavily on Isaiah 11, among other texts) that persuaded many Classicists that Vergil at least in this text was influenced by something very like the extant Sibylline Oracles. ⁵¹ I do not think we need to make an absolute choice between Vergilian reference-points. In my view, the reading of v.167 that points to a poet who “writes . . . differently at different times,” while it could refer to different books of the Aeneid, makes best sense if taken as encompassing both Eclogues and Aeneid as Vergilian depictions of Sibylline wisdom about the “headlines” of history. ⁵²

Vergilian interactions

The immediate Sibylline context for Book 11’s prophecy of Vergil’s activity, whose main concerns are Romulus and Remus (11.109–17), the fall of Troy (122–40) and the destiny of Aeneas and his line (144–62), put Kurfess and others in mind of the Aeneid. The unelaborated comparison points (“cfs.”) of Kurfess’ commentary, which point to themes in Aeneid 2 and lines in Aeneid 6 in particular, deserve reassessment within an updated sense of Sibylline intertextual and intratextual practice. It is not clear what kind of “parallel” Kurfess envisaged the Aeneid to be in relation to this section of the Sibylline Oracles; he does not explicitly raise the possibility of Vergilian “influence” on these later Sibylline strata. ⁵³ Some references in these Sibylline passages remain mysterious; for instance, predictions about Romulus and Remus are followed by two predictions of insurrection in Egypt (Sib. Or. 11.117–21). Alongside apparent echoes of Vergilian phrasing and emphases, to be considered below, there are aspects of the Sibylline prophecies, such as reference to Aeneas’ death “in the watery depths of the sea” (11.156–7) that I doubt should be conflated with the versions known from Vergil and other sources.

I will first highlight the sense of flow and shaping to the extant Sibylline combination of prophecies, effected through overlapping elements of ring composition. Romulus and Remus build strong walls and instigate war (11.115–16); Agamemnon and Menelaus destroy the famous walls of Troy and Zeus “fulfils the murderous deeds of war” (11.132–4: the link between the rise of Rome and the fall of Troy thereby solidified). Agamemnon is singled out as king (βασιλεύς) at the point when he storms the walls (11.130–1) and at his death (11.141–3). Troy’s fall is in this version strikingly gendered: the city is personified as a woman on her knees, both unaware (οὐχὶ νοοῦσα) and grieving (ἡ βαρυπενθής), receiving the wooden horse full of Greeks (11.136–7, this reference perhaps serving to “explain” the introductory, non-Homeric application to Greece of the epithet “horse-taming,” at 11.123). ⁵⁴ Troy’s “receiving” the horse is echoed two lines later by the many [dead] that Hades will admit (ὑποδέξεται), and the emphasis on entrapment is “answered” by the evocation of Agamemnon’s downfall at the hands of his cunning wife (11.143). In the intervening lines, a focus on the ransom from Priam, “the old man of many tears” (139: πολυδακρύτοιο γέροντος), becomes a point of contrast with the following prediction of ‘ageless’ (140: ἀγήρατον) glory in future generations,” a phrase that was applied to Troy in Sib. Or. 3.418.

Any consideration of Vergilian “influence” on these prophecies must first acknowledge that within the prophecy of Troy’s fall, the successive allusions to Hades’ receipt of many dead and to Priam’s ransom and tears (11.138–9) evoke the start and end of the Iliad. However, the application of Homeric formulas in this passage cannot be described as Iliadic. Besides the opening reference to “horse-taming Greece,” noted above, the Sibyl refers to Agamemnon immediately following her warning for Ilium regarding the Greek heroes as “far the best of those who love war” (ἀρηιφίλων ὄχ’ ἄριστοι, 11.129). Introducing Agamemnon as “one of these, king, a mighty warrior” (τούτων δ’ εἷς ἔσται βασιλεύς, κρατερὸς αἰχμητής, 11.130), with no mention of Achilles, challenges Hellenized readers’ recollections of Agamemnon’s quarrel with that warrior, acknowledged “best of the Achaeans” (ἄριστος in the singular).

Conversely, details in the prophecy seem to echo Vergilian presentations of the featured characters. The Sibylline three-line picture of Agamemnon himself combines several of the same elements as does the vignette at Aeneid 11.266–8, highlighting Agamemnon’s reversal of fortunes from leadership in war to defeat through his wife’s treachery as soon as he achieved his return home. ⁵⁵ Meanwhile, in a striking supplement to the pattern set by the prophecy of Troy’s fall after the advent of Helen, a “Fury from Sparta” (Sib. Or. 3.414 ~ 11.125), the Sibyl has spotlighted the device of the Wooden Horse: “an ambush pregnant with Greeks” (Sib. Or. 11.137: ἔγκυον Ἑλλήνων λόχον). The Horse is retrospectively recalled as a λόχος already by characters in Homer’s Odyssey, ⁵⁶ but the image here is more complex. Kurfess on this line simply indicates “Aeneid 2.15ff.” ⁵⁷ Indeed, Vergil memorably combines prior tragic traditions of the Horse as pregnant; ⁵⁸ his main account of the fall of Troy both draws attention to the belly/womb of the Horse (Aen. 2.20: uterum, 51: aluum, 401: aluo) and (though in an episode of contested authenticity) refers to Helen as a “common Fury” (Aen. 2.585: communis Erinys). A closer analogy to the prophecy in Sib. Or. 11, however, is the retrospect at Aen. 6.511–27, in which the shade of Deiphobus in the underworld first attributes his death to the deadly crime of Spartan Helen ⁵⁹ and bitterly recalls the horse armatum peditem grauis attulit aluo—‘heavy with armed infantry it carried in its womb’ (Aen. 6.516, adapting Ennius (see n.58 above).

Besides the Sibylline focus on the Wooden Horse, its subsequent snapshots of Aeneas’ escape from Troy (Sib. Or. 11.146–52) and future foundation of the “city of the Latins” (11.155) may well put readers in mind of Vergil’s Aeneid. Aeneas comes into view from Troy as it burns, carrying his aged father Anchises on his back and leading his son [Ascanius] by the hand (Sib. Or. 11.146–9), an image for which Kurfess indicated parallels in Aen. 6.110–11 (Aeneas’ recollection of his escape, told to the Sibyl of Cumae) and the enormously influential verses Aen. 2.423–4. More specifically, the Sibylline vision of Aeneas escaping Troy with a single son (Sib. Or. 11.149: υἱὸν δ’ ἐν παλάμῃ κατέχων μόνον) seems to reflect Vergil’s emphasis, whose impact on Aeneas-traditions is reflected e.g. in the Forum of Augustus completed in 2 BCE. ⁶⁰ Among the earlier traditions, which note plural children of Aeneas, some scholars count Poseidon’s prophecy in Iliad 20.307–8 of the future rule of παίδων παῖδες from Aeneas (cited above, p.9, in relation to the prediction of [Phrygian] “native descendants of Aeneas” at Sib. Or. 3.412). ⁶¹ If the “Vergilian” picture of Aeneas in Sib. Or. 11 recalls and counters these lines, it would bolster the implied assertion in the follow-up prophecy of Vergil, that he came closer than did Homer to the Sibylline truth about the fate of Troy.

A notable aspect of the Sibyllists’ portrait of Aeneas in flight is its emphasis on Aeneas’ fearful awareness of the dangers of the land and sea (Sib. Or. 11.152: δειμαίνων περάσει γαῖαν φοβερήν τε θάλασσαν). Such dangers are highlighted by Vergil’s Sibyl in her first prophetic address to Aeneas, Aen. 6.83–4: o tandem magnis pelagi defuncte periclis / (sed terrae graviora manent) . . ., and in turn by Aeneas speaking of Anchises (Aen. 6.113: omnis pelagique minas caelique ferebat). Rather than simply adding these to Kurfess’s list of “cfs,” however, I want to factor in our Sibyl’s following prophecy, of Aeneas’ death “in the watery depths of the brine” (Sib. Or. 11.156–7: ἐπὶ βένθεσιν ἅλμης / ὕδασιν) in the fifteenth year after founding Lavinium: she then predicts that his memory will persist in his family’s future empire stretching as far as mid-Assyria (Sib. Or. 11.158–62). Most commentators assimilate vv.156–7 with the traditions of Aeneas’ death or disappearance at the river Numicus after between three and eight years of rule in Latium. ⁶² Allusions to this event have been detected by ancient and modern scholars of the Aeneid in relation to passages such as Aen. 6.88–9 within the Cumaean Sibyl’s prophecy to Aeneas, and Jupiter’s famous prophecy in Book 1, which includes a prediction of Aeneas’ apotheosis (Aen. 1.259–60). ⁶³ As Kurfess acknowledges, however, the Sibylline timeframe contradicts that of Vergil’s Jupiter (three years), and I would add that the Sibyl’s situating Aeneas’ death at sea is not to be conflated with the mainstream tradition of situating the event at the Numicus river. ⁶⁴

Within Vergil’s epic, Jupiter’s prophecy of Rome’s empire without end (Aen. 1.279: imperium sine fine) is a significant intratext in the finale of Anchises’ extended speech to Aeneas in the Underworld. ⁶⁵ Lines from this section of Aeneid 6, which introduces Augustus as the one who will re-found the Golden Age (Aen. 6.791–3), were noted by Kurfess as comparanda for the second half of the Sibyl’s Trojan War prophecy in Sib. Or. 11. Aeneas is introduced as a famous child of heroes “from the race and blood of Assaracus” (Sib. Or. 11.144: ἐκ γενεῆς τε καὶ αἵματος Ἀσσαράκοιο), which may well recall Anchises’ description of Romulus as Assaraci . . . sanguinis at Aen. 6.778. ⁶⁶ Subsequent sibylline predictions of Aeneas’ descendants have likewise been compared to the most famous lines of imperial prophecy in Aeneid 1 and 6. ⁶⁷ Still, differences from Vergil’s account should not be overlooked. An emphasis on Aeneas’ mortality (and implicit denial of apotheosis, since he is “not forgotten” due to his descendants’ rule, not because of any cult worship) is in keeping with the Jewish Sibylline determination to diminish the status of epic heroes (compare Sib. Or. 3.430–1). Even as they recall “high points” of the Aeneid, Sibylline prophecies of Aeneas’ fear and subsequent death at sea might also be seen ironically as “fulfilling” the dread of the epic hero at a moment that was identified by Servius as Aeneas’ lowest point in Vergil’s poem: the fear that strikes him on the point of shipwreck (Aen.1.92). The admiration that the Sibyl next proceeds to express for Vergil as a poet is to be balanced against her claim of ownership over the material (Sib. Or. 11.168–9: “my stories” etc.). Against a broader late first century BCE context of jostling over which Sibyls predicted the wanderings of Aeneas (Erythraean, Trojan, Cimmerian . . .), it would be unsurprising if Vergil’s apparently original connection of the Sibyl of Cumae to the legend of Aeneas ⁶⁸ became in turn a provocation for the Jewish Sibyllists to stake their claim.

Aspects of the Sibylists’ preceding prophecy on Romulus and Remus have the potential already to have diverted readers’ memories toward the accounts of Romulus’ activity in Aeneid 1 and 6. One such detail is the repeated location of the twins’ activities on “seven hills” (ἑπτὰ λόφοισι, the site first for battles [Sib. Or. 11.112] and then for building city walls [11.115] and yet more war [11.116: βαρὺν Ἄρη]). Such collocations echo Jupiter’s prediction of Romulus’ activity as “founding the walls of Mars” (Aen. 1.276–7: Romulus . . . Mavortia condet / moenia) but also the memorable expression in Anchises’ prophecy to Aeneas in Aeneid 6, immediately following on from Romulus and in tight connection with a prediction of Rome’s ambition and imperial reach: “famous Rome” (Aen. 6.781: incluta Roma) “will surround her seven hills with a single wall” (783: septemque una sibi muro circumdabit arces, a line copied from Georgics 2.535). On this point too there is a case for Vergilian “influence,” since Vergil’s presentation has been assigned a pivotal role in the history of this cliché, found also in Rev 17:9, as the “signature” of Rome’s importance in contradistinction to other cities. ⁶⁹ For Jewish Sibyllists, the associations of the number seven with completeness, ⁷⁰ encouraged by Vergil’s elegantly structured line (septemque una . . .), could be an extra motivation to emphasize the seven hills here. ⁷¹

If we are persuaded that there is a non-accidental cluster of Vergilian intertexts from Aeneid 1 and 6 in these prophecies of Rome and Troy in Sibylline Oracles 11 before the prophecy about Vergil himself, the question then arises as to what kind of larger point could be cued by such potentially multifaceted attention to Vergil in this (presumed Jewish) part of the collection. Phrases from the Aeneid are not used in Vergilian order, and none come from Vergil’s Sibyl-figure: moreover, pro-Roman elements from the relevant Aeneid passages, such as celebration of Augustus or of Rome’s fame, are in our Sibylline prophecies dropped in favor of a repeated warning about Egyptian insurrection (Sib. Or. 11.117, 120–1). I therefore judge that the Sibyllists took Vergil’s prophetic passages not as pure “influence” but as provocation to lay their own claim to the predictions of “Trojan Rome.” This is not the only part of the extant Sibylline Oracles where Vergilian interaction can be posited—Lightfoot judges Vergil’s detailed portrait of the underworld (with Sibyl as guide) a not-implausible influence (alongside Christian sources) on the finale of Sibylline Oracles 2. ⁷² However, in Book 11, the passage about Vergil himself, in the obvious rewriting of Book 3’s prediction of Homer, brings thematic significance to preceding Sibylline echoes of lines from Aeneas’ meeting with the Sibyl and encounter with Anchises in the underworld, the most intratextual part of the Aeneid.

It is helpful in this context to point to the connection that Ellen Oliensis has discovered between Vergilian intratextuality and reflection on the medium of Sibylline verse. “Sibylline syllables” are memorably presented in Aeneid 3.344–52 as prophecies written on leaves and blown by the wind into disorder, as well as (in Aeneid 6.43–4) a plurality of voices from the hundred entrances to her cave, texts which in Aeneid 6 are then “stabilized” into a prophecy of Rome that Aeneas promises the Sibyl to preserve for future generations (Aen. 6.72–3). Tracking internal connections between passages of the Aeneid has been found to yield “a story about the making of the poem” as a practice of joining disiecta membra (scattered fragments) of other texts including Vergil’s own. ⁷³ My own suggestion is that Vergil is conversely used in Sibylline Oracles 11 to “authorize” the intertextual and intratextual practice of the Sibyllists of the Roman period. Their use of prior Sibylline texts, among others, within new prophecies is thereby claimed to be on par with the activity of the foremost Roman poet.

If, as I now suggest, foregrounding Sibylline intratextuality through Vergil calls attention to the broader compositional methods of the Sibyllists, our inquiry implicates wider issues relating to the continued composition and circulation of Sibylline oracles in the early Imperial period, ⁷⁴ let alone the “literary” qualities of the Sibylline Oracles ⁷⁵ and broader questions regarding allusions to Latin literature in this and other Greek literature of the Imperial period, ⁷⁶ which I cannot hope to answer here. The next, concluding section pursues only the ramifications of this study for the construction of the Sibylline authority.

Ramifications: the intratextual and intertextual Sibyl

As a repetition (with difference) of the prophecy on Homer in Sib. Or. 3, the prophecy of Vergil’s work in Sib. Or. 11 accentuates wider comparisons, initially between the two prophecies of the fall of Troy and then between other aspects of the two Sibylline books. In both details and in broader structures, Book 11 seems to be patterned after Book 3. Striking correspondences between these sets of oracles include: a world history at least as far back as the Tower of Babel (Sib. Or. 3.98–104 and 11.6–18); oracles on Alexander and his successors (3.381–400, 11.186–231); long series of oracles against various non-Jewish nations (3.300–380, 433–544, 11.172–85, 277–314) including apostrophe of a nation as a woman (3.785–808 of Judea, 11.277–97 of Egypt), and a concluding “sign-off” from the Sibyl that asserts her utterance of truth (3.809–29, 11.315–24).

Re-examined in this framework, Book 11 emerges overall as a clear response to the earlier Book 3. Counterpoints of detail include the only other use in the corpus of the Sibylline coinage ψευδόπατρις, at 11.40, in relation to the great leader Moses’ pretended Egyptian origin (whereas the use of the term in 3.420 contributed to the discrediting of the greatness of Homer). Counterpoint passages: the Sibyllists’ account of the punishments to fall on Egypt (11.277–314) recalls the imagery of reversed fortunes prominent in Book 3’s oracle against Rome (3.350–60). Further, Book 11’s concluding portrait of the Sibyl echoes from the sphragis of Book 3 her denial of craziness and assertion of complete knowledge of past and future, even as the new sign-off gives her a very different profile, perhaps closer to the interplay of association with and denial of contemporary figures of worship in Books 4 (Apollo) and 5 (Isis). ⁷⁷ Announcing (11.315): “Now I will go to Pytho and rocky Panopeia” brings the Sibyl provocatively closer to, though not identifying with, the priestess inspired by Apollo ⁷⁸ rather than, as in Book 3, claiming to have been informed by God and Noah. Still, in concluding Book 11, the Sibyl returns to the idea that someone reading her books (βίβλοις) will understand her command of the truth, against charges of mindless frenzy in the grip of divine possession (11.318–21). ⁷⁹

Although the compilatory or editorial composition of the “books” of the Sibylline Oracles should make us reluctant to generalize about the political sympathies of broad swathes of their oracles, we can at least observe that (a) although never “pro-Roman,” Book 11 is not “anti-Roman” in the way that Books 5 and 8 consistently are, and (b) it is distinctly “pro-Vergilian” in its reading of Roman mythical history and in its prophecy of Vergil’s activity. It therefore seems that Sib. Or. 11, which most modern scholars judge to have been composed soon after Vergil’s death, seeks to appropriate Vergilian prestige along with the cachet of the Cumaean Sibyl because they are firmly linked in the minds of the Sibyllists. In other words: Vergil’s distinctive use of/association with Sibylline prophecy elevates his cultural authority beyond that of Homer for the Sibyllists, and, in a move not unlike those in some pagan Hellenistic and Roman texts, the Jewish Sibyl makes Vergil’s rivalry of Homer a vehicle for her own claims to inspiration and universal importance. ⁸⁰ Thus, while the passage on Homer in Sib. Or. 3 emphasized his mortality, against contemporary ideas of Homer’s divinity, the Sibylline reference to Vergil in Book 11 casts him in terms we would have expected for Homer. Vergil is a bard (11.163: ἀοιδός) whose wisdom will be acknowledged by everyone, and by whom the cosmos will be educated.

When the Sibylline Oracles are viewed as a snapshot of a diachronic tradition, the distinctive repetition in other Books of lines and passages from the foundational Book 3 works to expose the problem of what the Sibyllists regard as “external” or “other” to the Sibylline genre they are developing. The reference to Homer as author in Book 3 is a form of allusion masquerading as intertext (insofar as the Sibyl constructs their relationship as dependence in the other direction) which seeks to account for this work’s verbal and metrical recourse to Homer on both deliberate and unconscious levels. The Sibylline allusions to Vergil likewise masquerade as intertexts (the Sibyl looking to Vergil for reference to “her own” words recorded in his books). At the same time, however, the prophecy of Vergil’s activity is a genuine Sibylline intratext “surpassing” the earlier prophecy about Homer, which effectively comments on Vergil’s reputation as the Roman Homer as a status properly deriving from the Sibyl herself.

This analysis of Book 11 not only offers a new sense of how the Jewish Sibyllists exploited mutual interactions of evolving Sibylline traditions in the Roman world. It also emphasizes the importance of the Jewish Sibylline literature as a body of work that foregrounds the complexity of authorizing strategies and the picture of hybrid cultural interaction across the ancient Mediterranean world especially after the third century BCE. The study of Jewish Greek literature in particular, which negotiates a variety of power differentials from the Hellenistic to Roman Imperial eras, still has great capacity to benefit from a focus on forms of intertextuality, as a means of signaling both place in and independence from a dominant cultural tradition.