Apollo and the Cumaean Sibyl. The Sibyl of Cumae was one of the most famous prophetesses in Greek mythology. Apollo desired her and promised to grant her any wish if she yielded to him. The Sibyl asked for as many years of life as there were grains in a pile of sand, but she forgot to ask for eternal youth as well. According tp Ovid, had the Sibyl become the god’s lover, he would have kept her eternally young, but she would not succumb. She lived for a thousand years in her cave at Cumae, delivering prophecies to Aeneas, among others. It is in Ovid’s version of the Aeneas saga that she relates her story of Apollo.
In Petronius’s Satyricon, the Sibyl, now centuries old and still denied death by Apollo, becomes a tiny entity suspended in a bottle. When youths ask her what she desires, she requests only death.
Most postclassical treatments of the subject depict Apollo and the Sibyl in romantic landscapes. The Sibyl’s cruel fate is also alluded to in later poetry.

Classical Sources. Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.129—53. Petronius Arbiter, Satyricon, 48.4.