Establishing Prophetic Authority and Challenging Gender Norms
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chapter 3 Establishing Prophetic Authority and Challenging Gender Norms The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power. Toni Morrison1 ∵ The question—Why the Sibyl?—was answered by contextualizing the appeal of a female voice of prophecy in the second century BCE. The following will ex- plore the question—How did the sibyllists present the Sibyl?—by examining what models the sibyllists drew from to construct the Sibyl as an authoritative prophetic voice, how they engaged in broader ethical discourse, and how they reinforced and/or challenged traditional prophetic topoi. 1 A Credible and Illustrious Genealogy As discussed in Chapter One, a multiplicity of traditions concerning the same deities, cult figures, etc. did not pose a problem to the belief system of the Greeks.2 While only a few lines remain of any of the Archaic Greek Sibylline oracles,3 Pausanias the Geographer (110–180 CE) preserved several dif- 1 Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 15. 2 See Chapter One, section 3 “The Changing Shape of Hellenistic Religious Discourse: Crisis of Belief?” See also Susan Guettel Cole, Landscapes, Gender, and Ritual Space: The Ancient Greek Experience (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Sæbjørg Walaker Nordeide and Stefan Brink, Sacred Sites and Holy Places: Exploring the Sacralization of Landscape through Time and Space (Belgium: Brepols, 2013); Jan N. Bremmer, Greek Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 3 Plutarch, Sulla 2.7.6; Dion.Hal. 4.62.5–6; Lightfoot, The Sibylline Oracles, gives a very concise history on the Sibyl in her introductory chapter; Nikiprowetzky, La Troisième Sibylle, 4–5. The claim for the Erythraean origin of sections of Book III will be discussed in Chapters Four and Five. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004426078_005 Establishing Prophetic Authority and Challenging Gender Norms 87 ferent genealogical claims for Sibyls by different regions in his Description of Greece 10:12:1–9:4 There is a rock rising up above the ground. On it, say the Delphians, there stood and chanted the oracles a woman, by name Herophile and sur- named Sibyl. The former Sibyl I find was as ancient as any; the Greeks say that she was a daughter of Zeus by Lamia, daughter of Poseidon, that she was the first woman to chant oracles, and that the name Sibyl was given her by the Libyans. (10.12.1) It is typical for irregular geological features to be assigned significance either as a marker of a noteworthy act in myth, a site of a shrine, or associated with a noteworthy local persona (deity, hero, etc.). The Sibyl is given a notable divine lineage as a daughter of Zeus and granddaughter of Poseidon. Pausanias states that the Sibyl Herophile would also refer to herself as Artemis as well as the wife, sister, or daughter of Apollo, with appellations changing while she was in prophetic frenzy (10.12.2). Pausanias recites verses attributed to Herophile claiming another genealogy: I am by birth half mortal, half divine; An immortal nymph was my mother, my father an eater of corn; On my mother’s side of Idaean birth, by my father was red Marpessus, sacred to the Mother, and the river Aïdoneus. (10.12.3) Herophile’s lineage as the daughter of a mortal and a nymph in this ac- count may appear less illustrious than the first account, but the references to Marpessus and Ida evoke a similar cast of characters in the excursus on the fury of Meleager to Achilles in Iliad 9.553–564. This Homeric excursus gives the genealogy of Cleopatra/Halcyone, Meleager’s wife, the daughter of Marpessa and the hero Idas. Idas, son of King Aphareus of Messenia, loved Marpessa daughter of Euenos/Evenus, son of Ares. Apollo also desired Marpessa and kid- napped her from Idas. Idas was not afraid to fight Apollo for Marpessa, so he brought his bow and they fought until Zeus asked Marpessa to choose between them. Marpessa chose the mortal Idas. Although Pausanias does not make the connection between Herophile’s genealogy and this reference, he does recount 4 The following quotes are from Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book X. trans. W.H.S. Jones, LCL (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935)..