sibyl

The sibyls (, singular ) were prophetesses or oracles in Ancient Greece. The sibyls prophesied at holy sites. A sibyl at Delphi has been dated to as early as the eleventh century BC by Pausanias when he described local traditions in his writings from the second century AD. At first, there appears to have been only a single sibyl. By the fourth century BC, there appear to have been at least three more, Phrygian, Erythraean, and Hellespontine. By the first century BC, there were at least ten sibyls, located in Greece, Italy, the Levant, and Asia Minor. History The English word sibyl ( or ) is from Middle English, via the Old French and the Latin from the ancient Greek. Varro derived the name from an Aeolic sioboulla, the equivalent of Attic theobule ("divine counsel"). This etymology is not accepted in modern handbooks, which list the origin as unknown. There have been alternative proposals in nineteenth-century philology suggesting Old Italic or Semitic derivation.