Aegean Tale: The Sibyl and the Newborn King, part 3

Why is Erythrae's sibyl among the prophets Michelangelo painted in the Sistine Chapel? In our concluding chapter, we learn the answer.

Last week’s installment ended with the prophecy of a son of god — Alexander of Macedon had written to the sibyl from Egypt, asking if she knew his true parentage. Her answer begins below, leading to the prophecy that would place her among Michelangelo’s twelve great prophets. This link will take you to the full story in one page if you missed previous parts.

A few years after Mausolus’s death, Persian soldiers withdrew and Macedonians appeared in the agoras of the village. A delegation arrived from Alexander, king of the Macedonians, asking the sibyl if she knew the parentage of the new emperor. She submitted a response of four lines on four leaves of parchment.

Zest for conflict & glory
Europe, Asia, and Africa will be
United under megas Alexandros
Sovereign of the known world

When the message reached Alexander in his camp near Memphis in Egypt, he clapped his hands in glee. The acrostic the sibyl had sent – the first letter on each of the four leaves – spelled out the name of the King of Heaven, ruler of the gods. Zeus. Zeus was his father – the very answer he had sought. Alexander was crowned god!

The roadways and agoras of Erythrae and the other cities of Ionia were now full of Greek traders. The Judaeans from Sardis maintained their yearly visits, brought their embossed boxes, and shared their prophetic scrolls with the sibyl. The Macedonians fought among themselves, however, with Greeks from Egypt – the Ptolemies – ruling first, then Greeks from Syria.

Eventually the king of Pergamum brought stability to the region, and when his line died out without an heir, his great empire passed peacefully on to a faraway state called Rome, which in time became an empire under a single ruler named Octavian, who, like Alexander before him, was given the epithet, “the great,” or Augustus as it is written in Latin.

In the 37th year of Augustus’s rule, a ship draped in dark red cloth sailed in among the barrier islands and bypassed Erythrae. It anchored near the sibyl’s tower. Six soldiers, dressed in shining, Roman armor climbed into the launch. An ambassador in a crisp white toga joined them, and they rowed ashore. There they asked for Herophile.

She welcomed them into the second-storey room. She was in her chair of augury, her back to the wide window. The curtains were open, and the visitors could view Mount Mimas on this sunny, spring day.

“State your request,” she told the ambassador, casting a wary look to the soldiers around him.

“I come from the Emperor,” the emissary announced. “I bear his request.”

Herophile smiled. “Ah, the Emperor. Long has he ruled, this Octavian – “

“Augustus,” the ambassador corrected her.

“I know his name.”

The ambassador reached into his toga and pulled out a scroll. He held it in front of him and unrolled it.

Herophile held up her hand. “I know,” she said.

The ambassador looked confused. “You know?” he asked. “I brought it directly from Caesar’s palace in Rome. I was told to open it in your presence”

Herophile smiled at him. She had a beautiful smile. Pearly white teeth and pale, pink lips.

“I know that your Augustus is nearly 60 years old. He has no heir, no hope of siring a son to inherit his kingdom.”

The ambassador broke the seal, unrolled the scroll, and looked at it. His face turned pale.

“The paper you bear asks a very simple question,” Herophile continued. “‘Who will inherit my kingdom?’”

The ambassador rolled up the scroll and replaced it inside his toga. He smiled. “That is exactly what it requests, madam.” The soldiers behind him looked at one another, amazed.

The ambassador bowed again. “You already knew the question. I’m afraid we do not yet know your answer.”

The sibyl called for wine and drained the whole cup at once. She rose suddenly and staggered a little before her chair. Then she spread her arms, turned, and circled around behind the chair and then around the walls of the round room two, three, four times.

The Romans held their places as the sibyl whirled around the room. They fixed their gaze on the mountain outside the window. Five, six, seven times. Herophile had begun to sing. A Greek attendant sat on a stool next to her chair of augury, writing the words that he heard.

At the end of the eight circuit, the sibyl, Herophile, raced to the window and leaned out, spreading her arms wide toward the mountain, still singing the song, although the words had begun to repeat themselves.

The song slowed then ended. Herophile dropped her arms and leaned down bent over the window sill. The Greek scratched a few more lines on the papyrus, stopped and looked up. The Romans remained silent.

They waited many minutes. “Should we see if she is okay?” a soldier whispered in the ear of the ambassador. He raised his hand – a sign to wait.

Finally, Herophile stood up straight, turned, and smiled at the party of Romans.

“Do you have an answer?” the ambassador asked.

“I do.”

“What is it?”

“It is not the answer your emperor hoped for. But it is the only answer I have.”

The ambassador frowned. He straightened his back and rose to his full height. The soldiers behind him snapped to attention. “Who will inherit the crown of Augustus Caesar? Who will rule his vast empire once he is gone?”

The face of the sibyl grew suddenly serious. “It is a boy…” She paused. “A boy living this very day in Judea.”

“Judea?” The ambassador spat the word. His face wore a sour look.

“Judea,” the sibyl repeated. She smiled. “He is the heir of Augustus. He will one day rule Rome and all the world, just as Augustus has done. His kingdom will have no end.”

The ambassador nodded curtly to the sibyl. Without another word, he turned and left the room, descending the stairs to the ground followed by his retinue.

The Greek attendant called after them, “Wait! Do you want the transcript of the prophecy?”

The door slammed their answer from the ground floor, and the gravel path announced Romans’ fading steps back to the launch.

Herophile returned to her chair of augury. “Read it to me,” she said. “I know what it felt like to know this great event. What did it sound like?”

The attendant read from the papyrus:

Judea’s new king is born,
Emmanuel, his name, for he is
Son and sign of God with
Us, for Judeans and for Greeks
Shall he rule forever and ever.

Cry out the news from Mount Zion
Hear the song, all peoples
Rush to see God’s greatness, born
In a humble shelter
Swaddled in rags
There in Bethlehem.

With the Romans gone, the scribe carefully stacked the leaves of texts on top of each other in the order they had been voiced by the sibyl. He took out an ornate, carved box, unclasped it, and opened the top. He placed the sibyl’s prophecy inside, took it outside, and buried it on the hill.

Illustration by Tuǧkan Türkkan for MTI.

Seventy years passed, and there came to Erythrae a traveling preacher named Yannis, promoting what he called, “The Way.” He brought with him stories of a man called “Jesus,” a prophet who had healed and taught in the land of Judea. The Erythraeans listened in wonder to his stories. Many accepted the god Yannis introduced. They were baptized, and they gathered weekly to break bread and drink wine and remember the Judean teacher, Jesus, even after Yannis had moved on to preach in Smyrna.

One day the Erythraean Christians got a letter from Yannis that warned them of false prophets among them:

“Do not believe every spirit,” it said, “but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

“This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.”¹

The believers looked at one another quizzically. The sibyl was a prophet, one of them said. She was not a part of their community. Was she, therefore, a “false prophet”?

“Test the spirits,” Yannis had written. No one wanted to test the sibyl, lest she curse them or cast a pagan spell. Finally two women in the group volunteered to go out.

The next day they walked to the promontory with the round tower. Herophile sat outside her house, a bundle of freshly picked poppies in her hand. She stood as the Christian women approached and welcomed them warmly.

“Do you wish me to give you a prophecy?” she asked, once a blanket had been set out in the spring sunshine and the guests had been given olives, cheese, and wine.

The women looked at one another. The elder one spoke, “Oh Herophile, we have come to ask if you are a true prophet. We have been told by a wise man that true prophets can only come from God.”

“Tell me about this wise man, Yannis,” Herophile said, leaning closer to the older woman, whose voice had softened with age.

The women gasped. Neither of them had said the name of Yannis, so afraid they had been of the sibyl’s curses. The younger one spoke up and told of Yannis and his teachings. When she uttered the words, “God’s son,” the sibyl raised a hand to silence her.

The sibyl called to her servant. “Bring me the buried, bronze box,” she told him. The servant hurried away. Herophile turned to the women, “Tell me more about God’s son, this Jesus,” she urged.

This was the first time Jesus’ name had been mentioned in the gathering. The older Christian leaned over and whispered in the younger woman’s ear, “This is strong magic she has.”

“She acknowledges God,” replied the younger, “She knows his name.” And the younger woman told about Jesus’ life: his birth in Bethlehem, foretold by Judean prophets, his teachings, his death, and his resurrection 53 spring Sundays before their meeting on the grassy hillock with the Erythraean sibyl.

The attendant returned with a bundle wrapped in rags. Herophile unwrapped it, and a bronze box appeared. She forced open the clasps, rusted shut over the years. She pulled out a stack of leaves.

She laid them out on the blanket, overlapping, with the first letter of each leaf showing. J-E-S-U-S C-H-R-I-S-T the letters read.

The Christian women looked at one another, amazed. The last six letters spelled out the holy name, spoken only among Christians. The sibyl had known it. She had been the first to use it, even while the Savior was still an infant.

They thanked the sibyl and promised to return the following Easter, if not earlier. They returned and told their friends of the amazing prophecy. Once again word of the Erythrean Sibyl criss-crossed the Aegean. She had told great Augustus himself that a Judaean child would someday rule his kingdom.

And three centuries later, during the reign of a Christian emperor named Theodosius, the people of Erythrae built a church atop the acropolis, right next to the Temple of Athena, which had fallen into disrepair and provided the stones for this new basilica. The tower of the sibyl, on its promontory next to the sea, was also abandoned.

The records of the newly consecrated church of that time include among the names of the priest and deacons the name, “Herophile.” (No mention is made of the gender of the church leaders.)

Six inscriptions from the church bear the name. Three were made between Theodosius and the Turkish conquest of the city in 1333. The last of them dates to 1922, the year before the Christians of Erythrae (by then known as Litri) were expelled from their community and resettled in Greece.

The same name appears in each: Herophile, “lover of heroes,” sibyl and foreteller of the Kingdom of God.

And many centuries later, as Michelangelo adorned the ceiling of a Christian chapel in Rome, he added images of those who had foretold the coming of Jesus: Jewish prophets like Isaiah and others the traders from Sardis had brought to Eyrthrae, as well as the Erythrean Sibyl – known to us as Herophile – and other non-Jewish sibyls from Delphi, Cumaea, Libya, and Persia.

Thanks for reading this Aegean Tale. I wish you and your family a very merry Christmas and the best of years in 2025.

1. 1 John 4:1-3