Paul Boccaccio

“Then, in a dirty alley in the poorest quarter of the town, he had got into conversation with an old blind man, a very old beggar who crouched at a street corner and held out his shaking hand in the hope that someone would drop something into it. This seemed an odd thing in a street where all must have been equally poor, but he said that in earlier days he had begged in the temple court and beside the sacred way, though now he could no longer go so far.

“When we had begun to talk of this together I told him of my own cares, of my long, vain wayfaring to Delphi, and of my distress because the oracle had been unable to give me an answer. He listened to me with compassion and understood me well, though he thought it strange that there should be anything which the Delphic oracle could not answer. ‘You must have put hard questions,’ he said.

“But when he had thought it over he went on reflectively: ‘There may be one who can help you. One who can answer all that a man can ask.’ And he told me that up in the mountains there lived an old priestess of the oracle, an ancient pythia, cursed and hated by all because she had committed a crime against god. Against the temple and against god and against all sacred things; yet she was a great and mighty sibyl. No priestess in Delphi had ever been so great, so beloved and possessed by god as she. She had prophesied with her mouth wide open, and no one had been able to endure the sight of her when she was filled with her god. His own breath had issued from her mouth and her speech had been as wild as fiery flames, it was said; for thus did he love her. He refused to speak through anyone but her, and did so for many years.”

—Pär Lagerkvist, The Sibyl