TrueQuotes - Verified Quotes Archive

"Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις; respondebat illa: ἀποθανεῖν θέλω."

January 1, 1970

Quote Details

Added by wikiquote-import-bot

Added on April 10, 2026

Unverified quote

0 likes

Literary critics Poets from Rome Satirists from Rome Novelists from Rome People from Marseille

Original Language: English

Sources

Sec. 48, translated by Richard Aldington, Ezra Pound & T. S. Eliot (New York: Oriole Editions, 1970) p. 28. Original Latin and Greek quoted by T. S. Eliot as epigraph to The Waste Land (1922). The reference is to the mythic Cumaean Sibyl who bargained with Apollo, offering her virginity for years of life totaling as many grains of sand as she could hold in her hand. However, after she spurned his love, he allowed her to wither away over the span of her near-immortality, as she forgot to ask for

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Petronius

Sec. 48, translated by Richard Aldington, Ezra Pound & T. S. Eliot (New York: Oriole Editions, 1970) p. 28. Original Latin and Greek quoted by T. S. Eliot as epigraph to The Waste Land (1922). The reference is to the mythic Cumaean Sibyl who bargained with Apollo, offering her virginity for years of life totaling as many grains of sand as she could hold in her hand. However, after she spurned his love, he allowed her to wither away over the span of her near-immortality, as she forgot to ask for