Dingo the Dissident

THE BLOG OF DISQUIET : Qweir Notions, an uncommonplace-book from the Armpit of Diogenes, binge-thinker jottings since 2008 .

Thursday 24 January 2013

from Petronius

"I have seen with my own eyes the Sibyl hanging in a jar at Cumæ, and when the young men asked her what she herself most desired [assuming Sibyls were victims of desire], she answered, I want to die. - ΑΠΟΘΑΝΕΙΝ ΘΕΛΩ
—Petronius, Satyricon
The Sibyl of Cumæ was the most famous of the old prophetesses. 
It was she who guided Æneas through Hades in Virgil's Æneid, because Cumæ is in Italy, not Greece.

She had been granted immortality by Apollo
(whose own oracle at Delphi proclaimed the famous words Γνῶθι σεαυτόν),
but because she forgot to ask the god for perpetual youth,
she shrank into withered old age and (according to Pausanias) her authority declined.

How many millions of humans have echoed her undying wish ?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

simply dropping by to say hello

Wofl said...

Hello, oh you millions of Anonymous who multiply upon the face of Earth.