Sibylline Oracles

Several series of Sibyls, of variable number and quality, that have been
previously attributed to different painters within Peter Paul Rubens’ circle, in foreign and Spanish collections, as well as in the art market, are here claimed to be by the hand of the Flemish master Jan van den Hoecke. The persistent confusion both in terms of attribution and identification of the subject matter is clarified in this paper, following on from Hans Vlieghe’s 1990 evidence. Tracing the now dispersed series as far as possible, the present article pays special attention to the eleven canvasses at Tessé Museum, Le Mans, as they appear part of a unique ensemble that still remains undispersed. For these series Jan van den Hoecke created an original iconography, with no formal precedents. Comparison of the different versions allows for a deciphering of the Latin texts accompanying each depiction, and for an identification of their literal sources. Judging by the numerous versions, the series of Sibyls must have rewarded the artist with great success, a demand that he
satisfied with a changeable effort.

La autoría del pintor flamenco Jan van den Hoecke se reivindica en varias series de Sibilas, de variable número y calidad, atribuidas a otros pintores de la estela de Peter Paul Rubens en colecciones españolas y extranjeras, así como en el comercio del arte. Tanto las atribuciones como la identificación de los asuntos son objeto de una gran confusión que persiste y se esclarece en este artículo, en base a lo avanzado por Hans Vlieghe en 1990. Se sigue la pista de los diversos ejemplares hoy dispersos en la medida de lo posible, prestando especial atención a los lienzos del museo de Tessé de Le Mans, por ser el único ejemplo existente de una serie que se conserva unida. Jan van den Hoecke fue el creador de una iconografía original que se distancia de los precedentes formales. La comparación entre los diferentes ejemplares permite descifrar los textos en latín que acompañan cada representación, precisando sus fuentes literarias. A juzgar por la elevada cantidad de versiones localizadas, es tema que le proporcionó éxito y demanda que satisfizo con esfuerzo cambiante.

Lives and Metamorphoses of the Sibyl

Studies on the Sibyl have multiplied these last years, proof, if needed, of the liveliness of the question of divination and oracular poetry. Due to the long-lasting and broad influence of her message, the Sibyl, truthful recipient of divine communication, lent herself to many uses and appropriations in the areas of religion and the arts. She inspired poets, painters and composers and nourished the hopes of various religious groups. The present review article benefits from recent publications to report on current views about the ancient prophetess and her survival through the ages.

In my paper I examine the use of Sibylline Books during Augustus' reign. I discuss the role of the Sibyl as well as the collection attributed to her in terms of cultural changes and cultural paraphrases. According to my opinion the prophetess had mainly cultural, not ritual significance. I argue for treating the interventions onto corpus of official Sibylline Books made by Augustus in the category of creating the new cultural identity for the inhabitants of the Empire.

In 1589, Jane Seager presented Elizabeth I with a small volume containing Filippo Barbieri’s Sibyllarum et prophetarum de Christo vaticinia (1481) which she had translated into English verse. It is a short collection: ten poems (Seager omitted two of the Latin texts), written in Seager’s beautiful italic hand, bound in a velvet cover which she had embroidered, and—a great novelty—containing the same texts copied in the new shorthand system devised the previous year by Timothy Bright. The poem have been printed twice in recent years, once with a brief introductory note in Early Modern Women’s Manuscript Poetry, eds. Millman and Wright (2005), and once by Jessica L. Malay (in ELR 2006, pp. 173-193) in an article which explores the manuscript’s place in the gift economy of books.
The literary aspects of the text—particularly of the text as a translated piece—have not, however, been explored. Nonetheless, I think these are significant. Firstly, the choice of Seager’s source-text is unusual: other women active in translation typically chose scriptural works, like the psalms, or rendered new doctrinal works into English. Seager’s decision to work on the sibylline prophecies points to the traditional status of the sibyls as the prophets sent to the pagans, and it is interesting to see her choose poems uttered by female figures. Perhaps it is more telling that her translation demonstrates some particularly Protestant convictions: she interpolates biblical references at various points, turning a faithful translation into a paraphrases; and (beyond the names of the sibyls) she carefully omits pagan references, so that, for instance, ‘Olympus’ is translated as ‘heaven’. This decision aligns her with a school of Protestant poetry which insisted on the segregation of sacred and secular material—although, ironically, this approach was already diminishing, in part due to the popularity of figures like the sibyls, who transcended such divisions.
Seager’s sibyl translations can also usefully be seen in the context of other contemporary versions of the same poems. John Napier’s use of the sibyls as anti-papal authorities in 1593, and his decision to set his source-text to verse, demonstrates that her work, with its emphasis (not present in her source) on the risk posed by foes to true religion, is part of the same Protestant polemical movement. On the other hand, Richard Verstegan’s inclusion of his version of the texts in a Catholic compendium of verse in 1601 serves to highlight the suppression of visual icons of the sibyls in both Protestant versions, but also casts into relief the—perhaps unexpected—Marian emphasis of Seager’s version, suggesting another important model and authority for sixteenth-century women, regardless of denominational allegiance.

The essay is concerned with one tale of József Ordódy, the storyteller from Érsekvadkert, in which he elaborately uses motifs about the end of the word and narratives of eschatological legends. According to my analysis this story is derived from his reading (a Czech Sibylline book published in interwar period Czechoslovakia) and, on the other hand, from the oral tradition of Hungarian folklore concerned with the end of the word. The excavation of the oral and written textual tradition of its source follows the trace of motif ’s history through the textual tradition of Czech Sibylline books via the late medieval period (the Legend of the True Cross) to the late antique legends of the Queen of Sheba which originated from the biblical narrative – as well as the oral tradition of Hungarian folk-eschatology and the textual tradition of antique Oracula Sibyllina. In this research are marked the occurrences of medium-changes of motifs during their inheritance by cultural memory. The object of analysis are the cases of changes in narratives due to change of medium. We can follow these changes and inheritance of autonomous discourse of the words of Sibyll, the medium, from primary orality via chirographic and typographic culture to the contemporary secondary orality and virtual culture.

Molto importante in questo senso la tradizione profetica della civiltà di Mari, i cui documenti provengono dagli archivi di Hammourabi (1723-1689 a.C.). Rimando al riassunto delle tradizioni mesopotamiche, che ho fatto in SUÁREZ DE LA TORRE (2002 2 , pp. 364-367), con la bibliografia essenziale. 3 Come figura nel titolo dell'opera edita da .

This book explores the representation of the gods in Greek hexameter poetry in its many forms, including epic, hymnic and didactic poetry, from the archaic period to late antiquity. Its twenty-five chapters, written by an international team of experts, trace a broad historical arc, reflecting developments in religious thought and practice, and ongoing philosophical and literary-critical engagement with the nature and representation of the divine and the relationship between humans and gods. They proceed from the poems ascribed to Hesiod and Homer and the so-called Cyclic epics, via the Hellenistic poets Apollonius, Callimachus, Aratus and Moschus, to the poets and poems of the third to sixth centuries CE, including Quintus of Smyrna, Triphiodorus, the Cynegetica, Nonnus, Eudocia, Colluthus, the Argonautica of Orpheus and the Sibylline Oracles. An epilogue explores the reception of the Greek "epic" gods by the Roman poets Virgil and Ovid, and by the English poets Tennyson, Walcott and Oswald.

It is known from ancient sources that “laurel”, identified with sweet bay, was used at the ancient Greek oracle of Delphi. The Pythia, the priestess who spoke the prophecies, purportedly used “laurel” as a means to inspire her divine frenzy. However, the clinical symptoms of the Pythia, as described in ancient sources, cannot be attributed to the use of sweet bay, which is harmless. A review of contemporary toxicological literature indicates that it is oleander (bitter bay) that causes symptoms similar to those of the Pythia, while a closer examination of ancient literary texts indicates that oleander was often included under the generic term “laurel”. It is therefore likely that the “laurel” of Delphi actually concerned oleander, and that it was oleander, not sweet bay, that the Pythia used before the oracular procedure. This explanation could also shed light on other ancient accounts regarding the alleged “spirit” and the “chasm” of Delphi, accounts that have been the subject of intense debate and interdisciplinary research for the last one hundred years.

Questes, n°17 52 Femmes illustres et illustres reines : la communication politique au tournant des XV e et XVI e siècles Julien ABED À la fin du Moyen Âge, le genre du catalogue consacré exclusivement aux femmes est particulièrement bien représenté. Le De mulieribus claris de Boccace (1360-1374), Le Livre de la Cité des dames (1404-1405) de Christine de Pizan, tous les textes de la « querelle des femmes » qui s'ensuit, comprenant éloges ou blâmes, ont contribué à faire de la femme le sujet exclusif d'une oeuvre. Illustrer le « femenin sexe », c'est mettre en mémoire les femmes qui ont su s'illustrer dans l'histoire, païenne ou biblique, légendaire ou historique. Parmi les genres littéraires les plus représentatifs du discours pro-féminin, les « listes », les « catalogues » de Femmes illustres se signalent par leur récurrence : tous ne reposent pas sur le même schéma textuel (songes allégoriques, dialogues,

Originally, the Sibylline Oracles were a Graeco-Roman literary genre, namely a collection of oracles composed in Greek hexamters which have not come down to us. The Sibylline Books that we have today are of Jewish and Christian origin and stem from a time when the genre was adapted first by Jews and then Christians. The altogether 14 books have developed between 150 BCE and 300 CE and for the longest time were only known through quotations in the church fathers such as Eusebius and Lactantius. According to the majority of scholars, Book III is the oldest of the Sibylline corpus and developed in the 2nd century BCE in Egypt. This thesis reconsiders the established consensus using old and new evidence alike. It focuses on the image of dominion of space in the Third Sibyl. On the one hand, space is looked at as the geographical image of the world as the Sibyl has access to, on the other, space is looked at as the political-theological image of succession of empires that rule the world consecutively until eventually they are superseded by the dominion of God. The dominion of God only play a minor role in Jewish pseudepigraphy. This could be related to the fact that the writings of the Diaspora were not immediately affected by the so-called Antiochene persecution and the Maccabean revolt unlike, for instance, the Book of Daniel. In the writings of the Diaspora the topic only occurs in the Third Sibyl and in the Wisdom of Solomon. It becomes particularly important in the New Testament. With this thesis I hope to provide an important contribution to the genesis of the image of the dominion of God in the New Testament. The eschatological age that the Sibyl prophecies for the establishment of the divine dominion on earth can be described using the term utopia.

It is known from ancient sources that “laurel”, identified with sweet bay, was used at the ancient Greek oracle of Delphi. The Pythia, the priestess who spoke the prophecies, purportedly used “laurel” as a means to inspire her divine frenzy. However, the clinical symptoms of the Pythia, as described in ancient sources, cannot be attributed to the use of sweet bay, which is harmless. A review of contemporary toxicological literature indicates that it is oleander (bitter bay) that causes symptoms similar to those of the Pythia, while a closer examination of ancient literary texts indicates that oleander was often included under the generic term “laurel”. It is therefore likely that the “laurel” of Delphi actually concerned oleander, and that it was oleander, not sweet bay, that the Pythia used before the oracular procedure. This explanation could also shed light on other ancient accounts regarding the alleged “spirit” and the “chasm” of Delphi, accounts that have been the subject of intense debate and interdisciplinary research for the last one hundred years.

This thesis examines divination at Rome and its role in Roman historiography, with particular reference to Livy and Tacitus. The focus of the thesis is why and how they used divination and the extent to which divination supported their historiographical aims.

Chapter One considers the meaning of divinatio and the types of diviners and supernatural sign encompassed by the term. I draw attention to the contradictions between types of divination observed by the Roman state and those observed by individuals in a personal or private capacity. This examination is supported by a full lexicography of divinatory terms in the appendix. The remainder of the chapter considers modern bibliography and the current scholarly position on divination and Roman historiography. I consider four main areas: divination, historiography, Livy and Tacitus. The final section of the chapter discusses Feeney (1998) on Literature and Religion at Rome and stresses the importance of regarding divination in Roman historiography as a text which could support the overall historiographical objectives of Livy and Tacitus.

The importance of divination at Rome is explored in Chapter Two. The chapter surveys Roman attitudes and approaches to divination from the late third century BC to the early second century AD. The analysis indicates a thriving competitive and mercenary atmosphere of diviners and divination that offered the Roman people an outlet outside of the more rigid practices of the Roman state. I argue that there was a plurality of views and approaches to divination. Even where Varro and Cicero seemed to promote a sense of a 'traditional' Roman approach to divination, both engaged with the subject from very different viewpoints. In contrast there was a plethora of authors and works that considered less acceptable types of divination, such as astrology. I suggest that an interest in forms of divination which were not practised by the Roman state was as much a concern for members of the Roman upper classes as it was for the lower classes. This interest meant Augustus was able to incorporate elements of astrology into his religious 'revival' without causing offence. I show too that 'traditional' Roman practice continued to be significant throughout the early Empire. I suggest that different types of divination were not practised to the exclusion of all other types, that Livy and Tacitus, in their desire to present a 'traditional' view of Roman divination, were subscribing to a literary construct laid down by Varro and Cicero and they have obscured the plethora of divinatory activity available at Rome.

Chapter Three considers why Livy and Tacitus included divinatory material in their histories. I consider briefly the nature of Roman historiography and the influence of poetry and drama and of rhetoric on the Roman historiographical tradition since these encouraged historians to indulge in inventio, in order to flesh out their historiographical narratives. I argue that both Livy and Tacitus were influenced by the character of the annalistic tradition which presupposed the inclusion of prodigies and other religious and divinatory material. This explains why both authors were aware of the dangers of fabulae but understood how that material could be manipulated to suit their own historiographical purposes.

Chapter Four shows how Livy used divination in Books 1 and 5 to emphasise the importance of Roman divinatory institutions and Rome's relationship with the gods. I show how he uses prophecy to direct his work towards the glorious years of the middle Republic and how the Third Decade deliberately echoes themes from the early books to point towards Rome's control over the Mediterranean. However, Livy also used divination to stress the sense of decline from the Fourth Decade onwards. Using the Liber Prodigiorum of Iulius Obsequens, I argue that this continued into the lost later books, but that Livy may have intended to bring his work round full circle by pointing towards the success of Augustus and his religious revival with conscious echoes of Book 1. Finally, I consider those types of divination that Livy included or omitted. I argue that the choices made stressed the sense of traditional divination and the antiquarian approach of his work. In particular, Livy used divination to emphasise the superiority of Roman divination to that of other nations and to private practices.

In Chapter Five, I consider how Tacitus adapted Livy's annalistic form for imperial historiography. The chapter begins with a survey of Tacitus' approach to prodigies and shows the different ways in which he could use prodigia as dramatic devices. I also show that, like Livy, Tacitus contrasted foreign and private forms of divinatory practice with the state practices in order to reflect the traditions of the annalistic form. But in the sections on the Histories and the Annals, I argue that Tacitus surpassed his predecessor in the use of divination for drama, characterisation and emphasis.

The legend of the Last Emperor was influential in medieval and early modern apocalyptic literature , and yet its origins are uncertain. Was it first developed in the late seventh-century Syriac Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius, or in a lost fourth-century version of the Tiburtine Sibyl? Scholars have long been divided on this question, and yet the answer has implications for the understanding of the development of Christian apocalypticism, as well as the degree to which Islam was influenced by Christian eschatological beliefs. This article marshals a variety of evidence to prove the origin of the Last Emperor legend in Pseudo-Methodius in the seventh century. It argues that details of the description of the Last Emperor show a distinctive development from Syriac literary themes, and that the Last Emperor in the Tiburtine Sibyl is an early eleventh-century interpolation based on the ideas popularized by the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius, likely having passed through a Byzantine Greek intermediary.

This paper studies the treatment of the Sibyl and Virgil in a speech attributed to Constantine the Great. Scholars generally focus on the role played by one or the other of these two figures in that writing. To do justice to the economy of the work, it seems necessary to keep them together. As a result, the Sibyl and Virgil serve as pagan counterparts to the witnesses of Moses and Daniel about the divinity of the Crucified. A prophetess initially attached to Apollinian oracular centers, the Sibyl becomes a prophetess of the one Christian God. That is illustrated by the famous acrostic poem Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour Cross that she is said to have uttered. As for Virgil, it is through the exegesis of the Fourth Eclogue, of which several verses are glossed and translated into Greek, that he is also Christianised.


Cet article étudie le traitement réservé à la Sibylle et à Virgile dans un discours attribué à l’empereur Constantin. La recherche s’interroge habituellement sur le rôle et la place de l’une ou l’autre des deux figures dans cet écrit. Pour rendre justice à l’économie de l’œuvre, il semble préférable de les tenir ensemble. Il en ressort que la Sibylle et Virgile servent de contreparties païennes aux témoignages de Moïse et Daniel sur la divinité du Crucifié. De prophétesse rattachée à des centres oraculaires apolliniens, la Sibylle devient prophétesse du seul vrai Dieu des chrétiens, ce qu’illustre le célèbre acrostiche Jésus Christ Fils de Dieu Sauveur Croix qu’elle aurait prononcé. Quant à Virgile, c’est par l’exégèse de la Quatrième Églogue, dont plusieurs vers sont glosés et traduits en grec, qu’il est lui aussi christianisé.

This article offers an appreciative and critical response to David Shepherd’s recent piece on the messianic temple builder texts in Targum Jonathan (“When He Comes, Will He Build It?”). Shepherd finds that each of the references to the messianic temple builder in Targum Jonathan is historical rather than eschatological: Tg2Samuel 7 still refers to Solomon; TgIsaiah 45-53 to (perhaps) Cyrus; and TgZech 6:12 to Zerubbabel. This article considers external evidence – messianic temple builder texts outside of Tg-Jon, including 4Q522, 4Q174, the so-called Midrash Rabbah, and Sib. Or. 5 – as well as TgJon’s internal evidence to address the historical-eschatological question. I conclude that, while Shepherd is right to question cavalier eschatological uses of Targum Jonathan, the best reading of the texts is still the eschatological-messianic one.

The Sibyl theme seems to be very attractive for literature because of various reasons. First of all, the theme provides means to express a sublime awe of the future, and, in general terms, some deeper reflections on time and history. Supernatural atmosphere of prophecies permits also to convey an impression of the connection between text and divinity. Furthermore, Sibyl often serves as a useful link uniting different traditions and cultures, e.g. Greek, Roman and Hebrew or Christianity and paganism. Many of those Sibylline features were exploited in twentieth century literature, in the works of such eminent authors as Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Stearns Eliot, James Joyce, Michel Butor, Pär Lagerkvist, and William Golding. This Sibylline tendency in modern literature is precisely the subject of my scrutiny in the paper.

This article investigates Sibylline Oracle 3.63 which states that Beliar will come ἐκ Σεβαστηνῶν, "from the Sebastenoi." Scholars have understood the verse as meaning that Beliar will be either a Roman imperial figure or a Samaritan false prophet. Pointing out the serious shortcomings of these hypotheses, the article argues that the Sibylline Beliar should be seen as originating in Asia, most probably in Phrygia or northern Galatia. The relevant numismatic and epigraphic evidence is explored along with references to those regions across the Sibylline Oracles. New interpretative possibilities generated by the proposal are also presented along with the suggestion that Sib. Or. 3.63-74 should be dated sometime between mid-first and mid-third century C.E. and provenanced to central Asia Minor.

Introduction De tous les Pères de l'Église de langue latine, Augustin est, après Lactance 1 , celui qui fait le plus souvent référence aux sibylles et aux oracles sibyllins dans sa réflexion théologique et dans son oeuvre. Il y revient à diverses reprises, tant dans ses écrits polémiques que dans sa correspondance et ses traités exégétiques et doctrinaux. Il en est une première fois question dans l'ep. Rom. inch. 3 qui date de 394-395 ; puis, plus brièvement, dans l'ep. 258, 5 à Marcianus qui doit lui être légèrement postérieure ; dans deux passages du c. Faust. (XIII, 2. 15), rédigé quelques années plus tard (398-400) ; dans le cons. eu. (I, 27), à peine postérieur au c. Faust. ; dans l'ep. 104, 11 à Nectarius de 409-410, et enfin dans trois passages de la ciu. (III, 17 ; X, 27 ; XVIII, 46), dont la rédaction s'étend de 413 à 426 environ 2 . Mais la discussion la plus étendue se lit au livre XVIII, chapitre 23 de ce même traité 3 . La présente contribution se propose d'examiner l'ensemble de ces textes et de dégager la conception que l'évêque d'Hippone pouvait se faire des sibylles et de leurs prophéties.

La toma en consideración de elementos escultóricos entendidos marginales por la historiografía tradicional permitió replantear el programa del conjunto. Se afianza la propuesta en este trabajo al comprobar que el esquema se ajusta a la tradición iconográfica francesa, confirmando la identificación del lugar de espera entre el juicio individual y el Juicio Final. A partir de los oráculos de la Sibila sobre la Primera y Segunda Venida y su relevancia litúrgica se propone una lectura integral de la puerta y el interior del templo que culmina en la imagen de la Virgen Blanca.

abstract
The taking into consideration of sculptural elements considered marginal by traditional historiography allowed to raise again the program as a whole. The proposal in this work is consolidated after confirming that it matches to French iconographic tradition, supporting the identification of the waiting place between the individual judgement and the Last Judgement. It’s proposed a comprehensive interpretation of the door and the inside of the temple, ending in the White Virgin image, based on the Oracles of the Sibyl about the First and the Second Coming and its presence in the liturgy.

Here is the poster for the upcoming Symposium Peregrinum 2022,  I thank the hard work of the other co-organizers who were our society's founders Pat Johnston, Attilio Mastrocinque, and László Takács and also our host, Elena Santagati.  This will be a much larger Symposium than when we last met in person, 2019.  We have many topics (see all the research interests).  My paper will be at the end of the Symposium on why the Senate ended the ransom or exchange of prisoners of war (POWs), even if it meant fellow Romans would live a life of slavery.

Ancient writers should be blamed for creating a myth, which was accepted by the modern historiography and quoted as a fact, that in the Republican Rome Sibyl was a real character. Ironically speaking, one principle myth about Sibyl has been formed in research: that she was something more than merely a culture figure.

Im Jahre 216 v. Chr. wurde Fabius Pictor, der erste römische Historiker, nach der Niederlage von Cannae nach Delphi entsandt, während man in Rom selbst die sibyllinischen Bücher um Rat fragte. Eine detaillierte Untersuchung dieses bisher vergleichsweise wenig beachteten Ereignisses führt zu einem besseren Verständnis der Rolle griechischer Orakel für Rom. Ihre Ergebnisse unterstreichen zudem, dass besonders von der älteren Forschung unternommene Versuche, die römischen Sibyllenbücher auf altrömische bzw. etruskische Schriften zurückzuführen, nicht haltbar sind.

A complex allegorical late fifteenth-century picture of which the original is lost survives only in a series of variously degraded
copies, be they either German woodcuts or Italian engravings. This image has remained unsatisfactorily explained, no doubt
because of its unconventional iconography. Instead of the usual interpretation of the picture as a satirical comment on the
contemporary political situation, we propose to understand it as a prophetic image announcing the imminent coming of the
Second Charlemagne – a French king who would become the Last World Emperor – turning thus an anachronistic journalistic
picture into a more convincing image of eschatological hope.

A little Middle-ages 2nd Crusades apocrypha about King David and a queen Sybil, that resembles the humorous stories of Canterbury Tales.

Was named "...the 100 suns" after the Centurion idea,
yet I decided to modify it to 9, because that's the way the Sybil's Persian society thinks.

Zoroaster for instance, and Mohammed, (and Moses & Samuel & Solomon were working at the level 9, of a big strong prophet king that ruled the place for all the people that didn't want slavery going on,
which is what the number 10 is often associated with

I just think that the Romans may have edited it to say 100 sons,
because of Revelations chapter 10.

Le fonti letterarie antiche attestano che il linguaggio oracolare era percepito come oscuro e insolito rispetto all’uso comune. Plutarco attribuisce allo Stoico Serapio un famoso frammento di Eraclito sul discorso sibillino (De pyth. orac.), mentre Luciano di Samosate si prende gioco dei versi oracolari quando mette in scena Zeus e Ermes nel suo dialogo Jupiter tragicus. Un testo emblematico come l’Alessandra di Licofrone si basa interamente sull’oscurità delle parole di Cassandra.
Nel presente contribuito ci si propone di usare la categoria estetica e retorica dell’oscurità per far luce su alcuni passaggi degli Oracoli Sibillini ebrei e cristiani. Si tratta di una raccolta di oracoli greci in versi esametri attribuiti alla Sibilla pagana. La loro composizione è distribuita nel tempo e nello spazio, dal II° sec. a.C. fino alla loro compilazione bizantina intorno al VI° secolo; essi vengono pertanto ricollegati ai circoli letterari dell’Egitto e dell’Asia Minore, sia ebrei che cristiani.
Tali profezie, attribuite alla Sibilla pagana, fungono da parafrasi retoriche che intendono annunciare, tra gli altri, episodi centrali nella cultura dei loro scrittori, come la Guerra di Troia, il Diluvio o l’Incarnazione di Gesù. Spesso squalificati per la mediocrità del loro stile o metro, gli Oracoli Sibillini ricorrono ad espedienti letterari simili a quelli descritti nei libri di progymnásmata della retorica greco-latina, situandosi agli antipodi della teoria della chiarezza retorica (saphéneia). L’obiettivo che ci si prefigge in questo contributo è di dimostrare che l’oscurità, caratteristica di tali profezie, giustifica sia fenomeni lessicali (scelta delle parole, glôttai, perifrasi), sia fenomeni strutturali (stravolgimento della struttura cronologica o logica della narrazione).

This chapter argues that views of the world to come in the Jewish-Christian Sibylline Oracles unite inexorable divine reckoning with temporal uncertainty and instability, whether such views occur in the collection’s universal histories or in the sibyl’s portrayal of her own eschatological future. First, I reassess the relationship between periodized time and eschatology in the universal histories of Sib. Or. 4 and 1–2. Periodizing time, both in the Sibylline Oracles and elsewhere, has generally been understood as asserting divine order and control. In both Sib. Or. 4 and 1–2, however, the periodized schemas are affected by redactional activity, evidenced by seams and fractures in the progress of time. I argue that the gaps and fractures in these periodized schemas create a sibylline temporality that blends ultimate divine control with temporal uncertainty. Such a fragmentary sibylline temporality could create chaos and instability for ancient audiences, heightening the threat of divine judgment. This chapter then examines the sibyl’s fate in the face of divine judgment in Sib. Or. 2 and 7. It is not just the future of other nations or the larger universe itself that is rendered uncertain in the face of looming divine judgment; these texts call the sibyl’s own future into question. I argue that this second dimension of temporal uncertainty works to subordinate a foreign, female prophetic figure to the God of the Jewish and/or Christian writers. In both the universal histories and the sibyl’s depiction of her own future, then, the Jewish-Christian Sibylline Oracles intermingle looming divine judgment with a future rendered unstable.

La question des relations entre écrits apocryphes et Écritures Saintes est des plus fascinantes, mais elle se pose en termes diլ érenciés selon les textes apocryphes étudiés. Dans le cadre du présent exposé, c'est la façon dont le récit de la Passion de Jésus est relaté dans le corpus des Oracles sibyllins que je souhaite interroger (Livres 1, 6 et 8). Cette question se pose de façon plus particulièrement cruciale pour la Sibylle qui s'exprime dans le premier livre de la collection, un ouvrage de 400 hexamètres grecs, dont une grande partie -les vers 1 à 323 -est probablement l'oeuvre d'un auteur juif du II e ou III e siècle de notre ère, remaniée ensuite par un chrétien, qui a souhaité compléter le tableau initial par une longue évocation de Jésus et de son ministère terrestre 2 .

Jens Fischer untersucht den Ursprung der Beziehung zwischen Princeps und dem Gott. Während Apollon gemeinhin als seine Schutzgottheit gilt, ist bisher wenig erforscht, wann und warum Augustus sich für ihn entschied. Indem Fischer die Beziehung der beiden im Kontext der Verehrung des Apollon in Rom allgemein untersucht, wird deutlich, dass viele Entscheidungen – beispielsweise der Entschluss zum Bau des Apollontempels auf dem Palatin oder die dortige Aufbewahrung der sibyllinischen Bücher – deutlich früher als bisher angenommen zu datieren sind.

Traduction d'un article de Pier Franco Beatrice initialement publié en anglais dans A. D. Fitzgerald (ed.), Augustine through the Ages. An Encyclopedia, Grand Rapids, 1999, p. 792-793, dans Encyclopédie Saint Augustin. La Méditerranée et l’Europe IVe – XXIe siècle, édition française sous la direction de Marie-Anne Vannier, Paris, 2005, p. 1040-1041.

The sanctuary of Apollo on the Palatine is one of the most important Augustan buildings. Situated very close to the first emperor's private residence, it is central for our understanding of Augustan culture. As one of its main functions, from at least 12 BCE the temple of Apollo accommodated the libri Sibyllini, one of Rome's most precious religious possessions. Another part of the sanctuary was a prestigious library that featured a Latin and a Greek section and played an important role in the lives of the contemporary poets. By means of an interdisciplinary approach, I demonstrate that the combined influence of these two functions of the Palatine sanctuary can still be recognized today in the fact that the Augustan poets started to call themselves vates. It will be shown that a combination of historical, archeological, and philological research can lead to a better understanding of this interesting phenomenon of the Augustan epoch which until now has almost only been approached from a philological point of view.