The Sibyl
"For I saw the Sibyl at Cumae with my own eyes, and when the boys said, "Sibyl, what do you want?" she would reply "I want to die."
The epigraph is from the Satyricon by the Roman writer Petronius. In this legend, the Sibyl had the power of prophecy. She had asked the god Apollo for long life, but had forgotten to ask to remain young - so she withered away, but could not die. In the Roman epic poem the Aeneid, the Sibyl helps Aeneas visit the Underworld.
The point of the epigraph is that Eliot is ironically comparing himself to the Sibyl - he is the exhausted witness to the long decline and fall of Western civilisation, and will describe a sort of modern hell.
More about the Sibyl in The Waste Land here.
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| The Oracle of Cumae |
The point of the epigraph is that Eliot is ironically comparing himself to the Sibyl - he is the exhausted witness to the long decline and fall of Western civilisation, and will describe a sort of modern hell.
More about the Sibyl in The Waste Land here.
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