Sibylline Books
The "Sibylline Oracles" were quoted by the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus (late 1st century) as well as by numerous Christian writers of the second century, including Athenagoras of Athens who, in a letter addressed to Marcus Aurelius in ca. AD 176, quoted "verbatim" a section of the extant "Oracles", in the midst of a lengthy series of other classical and pagan references such as Homer and Hesiod, stating several times that all these works should already be familiar to the Roman Emperor. Copies of the actual "Sibylline Books" (as reconstituted in 76 BC) were still in the Roman Temple at this time. The "Oracles" are nevertheless thought by modern scholars to be anonymous compilations that assumed their final form in the fifth century, after the "Sibylline Books" perished. They are a miscellaneous collection of Jewish and Christian portents of future disasters, that may illustrate the confusions about sibyls that were accumulating among Christians of Late Antiquity.