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“Apollo meant to spite me when he gave me immortal life but not immortal youth. I became an old woman after the natural time. But as he had promised I did not die. I stayed an old woman for a thousand years. Two thousand. More. Time changed its shape before my senses. Once, very faintly, I saw the mountains behind my cave and the flat and fecund fields of Cumae breathing, moving in a single exhalation. A thousand years as an old woman it took for me to witness that dark mountain’s breath…”
So speaks the Sibyl of Cumae (an ancient prophetess of pre-Roman Italy) in part 1 of her story which I shared a few weeks back, originally published as marginalia in the Sanctum issue of Dark Mountain in 2017. You can listen to that episode, and read more of the details about my reasons for writing this piece, and for recording it now, here.
This week I am sharing part 2— what came after the Sibyl took Aeneas into the underworld to speak with his dead father. Her love for him. The thousands of years she spent as an old woman, first withering, then in a glass jar, watching the rise and fall of eons.
If the stories are true, she is watching still.
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Painting: Mermaid on Horseback, Sofia Datseri © 2022 Crete
The Sibyl of Cumae, Part 2