Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 11, 2025
It contains the first anticipation of the return of Nero, but in a Jewish form, without Nero's death and resuscitation. The last of the Sibylline books seems to have been written about the beginning of the seventh century, and was directed against the new creed of Islam, which had suddenly sprung up, and in its fierce fanaticism was carrying everything before it.
But the more that his urgent need of the senate became evident, the senators received his wishes with a less pliant and less respectful spirit. It was immediately discovered in the Sibylline oracles that it was impious to send a Roman army to Egypt; whereupon the pious senate almost unanimously resolved to abstain from armed intervention.
Poplicola, upon consultation of the Sibylline books, sacrificing to Pluto, and renewing certain games commanded by Apollo, restored the city to more cheerful assurance in the gods, and then prepared against the menaces of men. There were appearances of treat preparation, and of a formidable confederacy.
The Romans under the republic were practically independent of oracles at shrines: in household affairs they had a family god for every department and every situation, and for State matters they found the Sibylline oracles sufficient. Later, with the widening of the horizon of religion, the resort to Greek and other oracular shrines became general a departure from the old Roman constitution.
The form is Greek, but the spirit is Hebraic; in the third Sibylline oracle, particularly, the call to monotheism and the denunciation of idolatry, with the pictures of the Divine reward for the righteous, and of the Divine judgment for the ungodly, remind us of the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah; as when the poet says, "Witless mortals, who cling to an image that ye have fashioned to be your god, why do ye vainly go astray, and march along a path which is not straight?
But there are some Sibylline books extant, which, however, are among the most transparent of humbugs, for they are full of all sorts of extracts and statements from the Old and New Testaments. I do not believe there ever were any Sibyls.
The somewhat Gothic soul of Gaston relished there something strange, or even bizarre, in the very manner in which the building set itself, so broadly couchant, upon the earth; in the natural richness of tone on the masonry within; in its vast echoing roof of timber, the "forest," as it was called; in the mysterious maze traced upon its pavement; its maze-like crypt, centering in the shrine of the sibylline Notre-Dame, itself a natural or very primitive grotto or cave.
But though the enactment of the Senate gave these gods Roman citizenship, and the priests of the Sibylline books were in duty bound to perform the ritual of the cult, be it said to the credit of the Romans, the gods themselves never took a very deep hold of the religious life of the people in general.
The books were written, like the genuine Sibylline books, in the metrical form, which the old Greek tradition had consecrated to religious use; and their style so closely resembled that of the Apocalypse and the Old Testament prophecies, that some pagan writers who accepted them as genuine did not hesitate to say that the writers of the Bible had plagiarised parts of their prophecies from the oracles of the Sibyls.
He gives as the reason that the Romans were content to use the Sibylline books and their own system of divination. His remark is made a propos of the Oracle in Libya, which was formerly in great repute, but was almost extinct in his time. He is undoubtedly correct as to the fact, but the decline of the oracular system cannot be explained by the indifference of the Romans.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking