The Oracle at Delphi no Longer Given in Verse (9)

Such was my answer to Boëthus, and in similar vein mention was made of the oracles of the Sibyl. For when we halted as we reached a point opposite the rock which lies over against the council-chamber, upon which it is said that the first Sibyl[*] sat after her arrival from Helicon where she had been reared by the Muses (though others say that she came from the Malians and was the daughter of Lamia whose father was Poseidon), Sarapion recalled the verses in which she sang of herself: that even after death she shall not cease from prophesying, but that she shall go round and round in the moon,[*] becoming what is called the face that appears in the moon; while her spirit, mingled with the air, shall be for ever borne onward in voices of presage and portent; and since from her body, transformed within the earth, grass and herbage shall spring, on this shall pasture the creatures reared for the holy sacrifice, and they shall acquire all manner of colours and forms and qualities upon their inward parts, from which shall come for men prognostications of the future.

Boëthus even more plainly showed his derision.

The foreign visitor remarked that even if these matters appear to be fables, yet the prophecies have witnesses to testify for them in the numerous desolations and migrations of Grecian cities, the numerous descents of barbarian hordes, and the overthrow of empires. And these recent and unusual occurrences near Cumae and Dicaearcheia,[*] were they not recited long ago in the songs of the Sibyl? and has not Time, as if in her debt, duly discharged the obligation in the bursting forth of fires from the mountain, boiling seas, blazing rocks tossed aloft by the wind, and the destruction of such great and noble cities that those who came there by daylight felt ignorance and uncertainty as to where these had been situated, since the land was in such confusion? Such things, if they have come to pass, it is hard to believe, to say nothing of foretelling them, without divine inspiration.