Number of Sibyls
Like Heraclitus, Plato speaks of only one Sibyl, but in course of time the number increased to nine, with a tenth, the Tiburtine Sibyl, probably Etruscan in origin, added by the Romans. According to Lactantius' Divine Institutions (i.6, 4th century AD, quoting from a lost work of Varro, 1st century BC) these ten sibyls were those in the following list. Of them, the three most famous sibyls throughout their long career were the Delphic, the Erythraean and the Cumaean. Not all the following Sibyls were securely identified with an oracular shrine, and in the vague and shifting Christian picture there is some overlap.
Read more about this topic: Sibyl
Famous quotes containing the words number of, number and/or sibyls:
“In a number of other cultures, fathers are not relegated to babysitter status, nor is their ability to be primary nurturers so readily dismissed.... We have evidence that in our own society men can rear and nurture their children competently and that men’s methods, although different from those of women, are imaginative and constructive.”
—Kyle D. Pruett (20th century)
“Without claiming superiority of intellectual over visual understanding, one is nevertheless bound to admit that the cinema allows a number of æsthetic-intellectual means of perception to remain unexercised which cannot but lead to a weakening of judgment.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sibyls told,
In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)