page_title: Sibyl
section_title: Delphic Sibyl
hierarchical_section_title: Sibyl / Specific sibyls / Delphic Sibyl
context_page_description: The sibyls were oracles in Ancient Greece. The earliest sibyls, according to legend, prophesied at holy sites. Their prophecies were influenced by divine inspiration from a deity; originally at Delphi and Pessinos. In Late Antiquity, various writers attested to the existence of sibyls in Greece, Italy, the Levant, and Asia Minor.
  The English word sibyl comes—via the Old French sibile and the Latin sibylla—from the ancient Greek Σίβυλλα. Varro derived the name from theobule, but modern philologists mostly propose an Old Italic or alternatively a Semitic etymology.
context_section_description: The Delphic Sibyl was a mythical woman from before the Trojan Wars (c. 11th century BC) mentioned by Pausanias writing in the 2nd century AD about stories he had heard locally. The Sibyl would have predated the real Pythia, the oracle and priestess of Apollo, originating from around the 8th century BC.
caption: Michelangelo's Delphic Sibyl, Sistine Chapel
exif: {}