CAVE OF THE SIBYL

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 90, 13 October 1932, Page 12

CAVE OF THE SIBYL

DESCRIBED BY VIRGIL *

DISCOVERY NEAR NAPLES

United Press Association—By Eleclrlo Tell* ' craph—Copyright. ' (Times Cable.) (Received 13th October, noon.) ROME, 12th October. What is described as one of the greatest archaeological triumphs of recent years is announced. Professor Maiuri, Superintendent of Antiquities, discovered on the west side of Mount Guinae the cave in which the Sibyl of Cumae delivered her oracles and predicted; the foundation of Rome to Aeneas. Professor Maiuri, in exploring a wina cellar, discovered a corridor exactly as described by Virgil in the Sixth Book of the Aeneid, ending in a vaulted chamber in which the Sibyl dwelt. In ancient times Cumae was a city, on the coast of Campania, 10 miles west of Naples. It was founded as a Greek colony from Cyme, in Euboea, about 1000 B.C. It contained the cavern of the "Cumaean Sibyl" which, is referred to by Virgil in the Sixth Aeneid and is now reported to have been discovered. The Sixth Aeneid begins with the, landing of Aeneas and his v men on the beach at Cumae and the visit, of the Trojan hero to the.temple of Apollo and the cave of the Sibyl, which is described (11 42 et seq) as having been cut into the side of the Tock, ' with a hundred approaches and exits . from, which issued an equal number of voices, the responses of the Sibyl. Here Aeneas consults the oracle arid hears of his future. He asks that he be allowed to visit the other world and. see his father Priam again. The Sibyl tells the way and then follows the "faeilis descensus Averno" and on* of the greatest passages in all poetry.