SIBYLS, in pagan antiquity, certain women said to have been endowed with a prophetic spirit, and to have delivered oracles for showing the fates and revolutions of kingdoms, &c. The most eminent of the ten Sibyls mentioned by the ancient writers was she whom the Romans called the Cumaan or Erythraean
Sibyl, from her being born at Erythræ in Ionia, and removed from thence to Cumæ in Italy, where she delivered all her oracles from a cave dug out of the main rock, according to Virgil, Æneid III. 441, &c.
There is still preserved, in eight books of Greek verses, a collection of verses pretended to have been delivered by the Sibyls: but the generality of critics look upon them as spurious; and it is the opinion of Prideaux that the story of the books of the Sibyls told to Tarquin was a state-trick or fetch of politics.