The Cumaean Sibyl lived in Cumae (now Cuma) which was the first Greek colony founded in Italy, which is about twenty miles from Naples. Her home was a grotto under the ground which can still be seen to this day in a volcanic region where vapours would issue from the ground.
Her existence is recorded from two main sources, the first is from the manuscript Aeneid by Virgil where he writes about the mysterious woman;
“Arriv'd at Cumae, when you view the flood
Of black Avernus, and the sounding wood,
The mad prophetic Sibyl you shall find,
Dark in a cave, and on a rock reclin'd.
She sings the fates, and, in her frantic fits”
Also during his visit, she took him on a tour of the underworld where he questioned her about her existence, asking if she was an immortal goddess, to which she answered that she was not a goddess and she was mortal yet she had been granted a long life, yet the long life was not that of eternal youth but one where her body will fade until all that is left is her voice, living for a thousand years.
In other manuscripts it is recorded that she went to king Tarquin with nine books that contained the destiny of his kingdom and the world, they were called the Sibylline Books, the king refused and the sibyl burned three books in a fire, when he refused the second time she burned three more, but the king eventually bought the last three books for 300 coins. The books are recorded to have been destroyed in a fire in 83 B.C. This led to the Roman Emperor demanding that the collection to be reformed from other copies which became the Sibylline Oracles.
It is possible that this is the Sibyl in which Naevius spoke about in his books about the Punic War, yet he called her the Cimmerian Sibyl or Carmentis as he recorded the same place near Lake Avernus in Italy as being the place where she resided.
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