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Epigraph:
“Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi
in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σιβυλλα τι θελεις; respondebat ill: αποθανειν θελω.” Additional info: From the Satyricon by Gaius Petronius. Eliot (1971) gives this translation:
I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage, and when the boys said to
her: “Sibyl, what do you want?” she answered: “I want to die.”
The Satyricon tells of the misadventures of a former gladiator through the Roman Empire in the first century A.D. Only fragments of the story still exist. The scene Eliot quotes occurs during a feast at the villa of a wealthy buffoon named Trimalchio. Sibyl of Cumae was a prophetess in service to Apollo and a great beauty in her youth. Apollo wished to take her as his lover. He offered her anything she desired and she asked him for long life, measured against the number of grains in a handful of dust. He granted her this and still she rejected him. He left her. In time, Sibyl grew old, but did not die. She lived for hundreds of years, each year becoming smaller and frailer, Apollo having given her long life but denying her eternal youth. When Trimalchio speaks of her in the Satyricon, she is little more than a tourist attraction, tiny, ancient, confined, and longing to die. |