This book immediately attracts the potential reader with its title and its coloured cover, showing a sibyl from the Sistine chapel. However, the book does not focus on sibyls until the third chapter: the first two focus more on the general history of prophecy, and although they are very well written and provide an insightful introduction to the topic, they could have been shorter, leaving more space for the central chapters about the sibyls themselves.
Chapter 1 opens with the authoritative voice of Cicero (Div. 1.2), who states that everyone, from any social class, believes in the existence of prophetic signs. G. seems to agree with Cicero's statement, as he interprets the observation of signs as something almost innate in human nature. Tracing this archetype back to the origins of humanity, G. convincingly affirms that human beings started looking for signs once they developed beliefs in supernatural forces which governed everything. Manifestations of the divine could be understood only by a few privileged people who then reveal their meaning to others. Different names like sibyls, diviners, prophets, oracles and augurs identified these people whose prophetic power was granted by nature, by the gods and by the community (pp. 22–6).
Chapter 2 deals with the close relationship of women with prophecy, a gift which seemed to give many of them a high status within their own community. G. mentions prophetic women among different cultures: the Celtic druidesses (pp. 64–5); the women who performed the cults of the Earth Mother in Greece assuring the continuity of the community (p. 67); the virginal priestesses at the temple of Vesta in Rome (pp. 70–1); and the Hebrew prophetesses (pp. 72–6).
In the following four chapters (3–6), G. portrays four of the most famous sibyls in antiquity: the Erythraean, the Cumaea, the Delphica and the Tiburtina. These sibyls, as presented by G., seem to have several traits in common: their mythological origin is confused and often controversial. None the less, they clearly emerge from a remote past as strong feminine figures, able to influence the will of entire communities and powerful kings. The courage and the independence of these prophetesses is admired in antiquity, and these qualities grant them exceptional gifts such as their ability to travel to hell and back in Virgil's Aeneid (pp. 111–14). G. seems to infer, but does not state explicitly, that the strong, sometimes stubborn, nature of sibyls seems to be the inheritance of a lost matriarchal tradition in which female priestesses of the Earth Mother were allowed to decide on the choices of the community (p. 67). With the subsequent prevalence of patriarchal cults in the Greek world, the Earth Mother was dethroned by male gods (p. 45): Dodona became the centre dedicated to Zeus, Delphi the sanctuary of Apollo (p. 134). The sibyls still received prophetic gifts from male gods as the priestesses did from the Earth Mother, but in exchange, they were expected to be subject to their will (pp. 206–7). Apollo often granted the gift of prophecy to women as a sign of his favours (p. 130), but punished those who refused him sexually, by turning his gifts into a curse (p. 69): for instance, the Cumaea Sibyl was granted a very long life but not eternal youth (p. 104). Cassandra received the gift of prophecy, but was condemned not to be believed by anybody (pp. 67–9). On the contrary, the Delphic Sibyl seems to have accepted, or at least not to have fought against, Apollo' seduction, and therefore received a strong prophetic power (pp. 129–30).
G. claims that the prophets throughout history were often women, and this did not change even in Christianity (pp. 69–78). On the contrary, in Late Antiquity the authority of sibyls was still so strong and influential that despite their deep pagan roots, they became part of the Christian tradition (pp. 197–8).
In the concluding Chapter 7 and in the epilogue, G. gives a brilliant account of several pagan traditions which survived until recently because they were embedded into Christian tradition (pp. 177–97). The sibyls survived thanks to their incorporation into a process of Judean-Christian story-telling (pp. 198–201). In the Judean-Christian Sibylline Oracles, which replaced the pagan Books of Sibyls, the sibyls were presented as the prophetesses who announced the birth of Christ to the Pagans. This tradition, started in Late Antiquity, had a later revival in the Middle Ages, in particular in the thirteenth century, when a Dominican friar wrote the Golden Legend, according to which the Tiburtine Sibyl announced the birth of Christ to the emperor Augustus (pp. 156–7).
G.'s description of the sibyls in Christian tradition is accurate but could have been more complete: for instance, G. never explains to what extent the re-interpretation of the ‘Pagan’ sibyls as ‘Judean-Christian’ prophetesses changed the image of sibyls as described by Classical authors. And, more generally, G. does not discuss how the relationship between women and prophecy changed in Late Antiquity and in the Middle Ages: did some women maintain the privilege of guiding their community with their prophetic intuitions or were the Sibylline texts the last remnants of this ancient tradition, even though their prophecies now exclusively served the purpose of announcing the birth of Christ?
G. does not answer these questions but he gives a suggestive example of the prominent place given to sibyls by Christianity: in the Sistine Chapel Michelangelo painted five sibyls together with seven Old Testament prophets. This sort of ‘illusionary proximity’ (p. 206) suggests that the sibyls shared their position with the prophets not only in Michelangelo's painting, but also in the Christian tradition.
Three of the sibyls from the Sistine Chapel can be admired in the beautiful colour high-quality illustrations. The illustrations, all accurately described, also include five sixteenth-, seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century paintings and two photographs. I would suggest looking at these illustrations while reading Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6, in order to compare the historical portrait of the sibyls with their artistic representation.
This book is accessible without being superficial and can be appreciated by everyone. Academic scholars will be glad to find a monograph about this rarely studied topic, almost 30 years after W.H. Parke's Sibyls and Sibylline Prophecy in Classical Antiquity (1988). However, Parke's book is still unparalleled for its accurate study of sources referring to sibyls, dating from the Classical period to Early Christianity. A non-academic reader will find in G.'s book an enjoyable way to learn something more on a topic infrequently treated in popular books and social media. Furthermore, G.'s insightful discussions have an incredibly broad chronological, historical and geographical perspective. The academic reader should be aware that G. does not deal impeccably with the primary sources. Although he seems to be more confident with the late-antique and medieval evidence than with the earlier ‘classical’ material, there is a real scarcity of primary referencing. Exceptions to this are the short but relevant quotations from classical or medieval sources which open each chapter. However, it is evident that this is not meant to be an academic book, and despite the lack of punctual references, it gives accurate and detailed information and can be considered as excellent introductory reading for a more specific academic study.
