Sibyl. The sibyls were oracles in Ancient Greece. The earliest sibyls, according to legend, prophesied at holy sites. Their prophecies were influenced by divine inspiration from a deity; originally at Delphi and Pessinos, the deities were chthonic deities. In Late Antiquity, various writers attested to the existence of sibyls in Greece, Italy, the Levant, and Asia Minor. The English word sibyl comes, via the Old French sibile and the Latin sibylla, from the ancient Greek. Varro derived the name from theobule, but modern philologists mostly propose an Old Italic or alternatively a Semitic etymology. The first known Greek writer to mention a sibyl is Heraclitus, in the 5th century BC: The Sibyl, with frenzied mouth uttering things not to be laughed at, unadorned and unperfumed, yet reaches to a thousand years with her voice by aid of the god.' Walter Burkert observes that frenzied women from whose lips the god speaks are recorded very much earlier in the Near East, as in Mari in the second millennium and in Assyria in the first millennium. Until the literary elaborations of Roman writers, sibyls were not identified by a personal name, but by names that refer to the location of their temenos, or shrine. In Pausanias, Description of Greece, the first sibyl at Delphi mentioned was of great antiquity, and was thought, according to Pausanias, to have been given the name sibyl by the Libyans. Sir James Frazer calls the text defective. The second sibyl referred to by Pausanias, and named Herophile, seems to have been based ultimately in Samos, but visited other shrines, at Clarus, Delos, and Delphi and sang there, but that at the same time, Delphi had its own sibyl. James Frazer writes, in his translation and commentary on Pausanias, that only two of the Greek sibyls were historical: Herophile of Erythrae, who is thought to have lived in the 8th century BC, and Phyto of Samos who lived somewhat later. He observes that the Greeks at first seemed to have known only one sibyl, and instances Heraclides Ponticus as the first ancient writer to distinguish several sibyls: Heraclides names at least three sibyls, the Phrygian, the Erythraean, and the Hellespontine. The scholar David S. Potter writes, In the late fifth century BC it does appear that 'Sibylla' was the name given to a single inspired prophetess. Like Heraclitus, Plato speaks of only one sibyl, but in course of time the number increased to nine, with a tenth, the Tiburtine Sibyl, probably Etruscan in origin, added by the Romans. According to Lactantius' Divine Institutions, Varro lists these ten: the Persian, the Libyan, the Delphic, the Cimmerian, the Erythraean, the Samian, the Cumaean, the Hellespontine, the Phrygian, and the Tiburtine. The Persian Sibyl was said to be a prophetic priestess presiding over the Apollonian Oracle; though her location remained vague enough so that she might be called the Babylonian Sibyl, the Persian Sibyl is said to have foretold the exploits of Alexander the Great. Also named Sambethe, she was reported to be of the family of Noah. The 2nd-century AD traveller Pausanias, pausing at Delphi to enumerate four sibyls, mentions the Hebrew Sibyl who was brought up in Palestine named Sabbe, whose father was Berosus and her mother Erymanthe. Some say she was a Babylonian, while others call her an Egyptian Sibyl. The medieval Byzantine encyclopedia, the Suda, credits the Hebrew Sibyl as author of the Sibylline oracles. The so-called Libyan Sibyl was identified with prophetic priestess presiding over the ancient Zeus-Amon oracle at the Siwa Oasis in the Western Desert of Egypt. The oracle here was consulted by Alexander after his conquest of Egypt. The mother of the Libyan Sibyl was Lamia, the daughter of Poseidon. Euripides mentions the Libyan Sibyl in the prologue to his tragedy Lamia. The Delphic Sibyl was a mythical woman from before the Trojan Wars mentioned by Pausanias writing in the 2nd century AD about stories he had heard locally. The Sibyl would have predated the real Pythia, the oracle and priestess of Apollo, originating from around the 8th century BC. Naevius names the Cimmerian Sibyl in his books of the Punic War and Piso in his annals. The Sibyl's son Evander founded in Rome the shrine of Pan which is called the Lupercal. The Erythraean Sibyl was sited at Erythrae, a town in Ionia opposite Chios.