It is therefore a very definite and interesting problem which we have before us.  It is to examine the workings of these oracles and to explain why they had such an extraordinary effect on religion and society, that in three centuries they could entirely change both the form and the content of Roman religion, and under the guise of increasing its zeal, so sap its vitality that it required almost two hundred years of human experience and suffering before true religion was in some sense at least restored to its own place.

Like the origin of almost all the great religious movements in the world’s history, the beginnings of the Sibylline books are shrouded in mystery.  A later age, for whom history had no secrets, with a cheap would-be omniscience told of the old woman who visited Tarquin and offered him nine books for a certain price, and when he refused to pay it, went away, burned three, and then returning offered him at the original price the six that were left; on his again refusing she went away, burned three more and finally offered at the same old price the three that remained, which he accepted.  Except as a sidelight on the character of the early Greek trader the story is worthless.  It is doubtful even if the presence of the Sibylline books in Rome goes back beyond the republic.  The first dateable use of them was in the year B.C. 496, and there is one little fact connected with them which makes it probable that they did not come in until the republic had begun.  This is the circumstance that in view of the great secrecy of the books it is unthinkable that they should ever have been in Rome without especial guardians, and yet the earliest guardians that we know of were a newly made priesthood consisting originally of two men, the so-called “two men in charge of the sacrifices” (IIviri sacris faciundis).  Now the form of this title is peculiar; it is not a proper name like the titles of all the other priesthoods.  Instead it is built on the plan of the titles of the special committees appointed by the Senate for administrative purposes; it bears every mark therefore of having arisen under the republic, rather than under the kingdom, at a time when the Senate had the supreme control.  So much may be said regarding the time when they were introduced into Rome; as for the place from which they came, this was without doubt the Greek colonies of Southern Italy, probably the oldest and most important of them, Cumae, so famous for its Sibyl.  This was not the first association that Rome had had with Cumae, for in all probability the worship of Apollo had spread from there into Rome toward the close of the kingdom.  Apollo and the books were connected at Cumae, for it was Apollo who inspired the Sibyl, and the oracles were his commands, but it is almost certain that Apollo came to Rome in advance of the oracles.  He came there as a god of healing and was given a sacred place outside the pomerium in the Campus Martius, on the spot where later (B.C.