were replaced by scattered papers, collected from time to time in
various parts of the empire, purporting to be the writings of the
sibyl. These sibylline leaves, as they were called, contained passages
supposed to be prophetic of the coming of Christ, and this is why the
Cumæan sibyl is placed by Michelangelo among the prophets.

The sibyl is reading aloud from one of her books of oracles. The two
little genii standing behind her shoulder, and listening with absorbed
attention, hold another book, not yet unclasped, ready for her. She
reads her prophecy with keen, searching eyes, and a manner that is
almost stern. We can see in the large, strong features the
determination of her character.

It is not a gentle face, and not pleasing, but it is full of meaning.
We read there the record of the centuries which have passed over her
head, bringing her the deep secrets of life. Yet the prophecies are
still unfulfilled, and there is a look of unsatisfied longing in her
wrinkled old face.

You will notice that the outlines of the Cumæan sibyl are drawn in an
oval figure similar to that inclosing the Delphic sibyl. Here,
however, the oval is of a more elongated form, and the left side is
broken midway by the introduction of the book.

The old writer Pausanias, writing his "Description of Greece," in the
second century, says that the people of Cumæ showed a small stone urn
in the temple of Apollo containing the ashes of the sibyl. For many
centuries her cavern was pointed out to travellers in a rock under the
citadel of Cumæ. Finally the fortifications of the city were
undermined, but to this day a subterranean passage in the rock on