There is less distance than one might suppose between the exaltation of an oracle and her bottom line. He balked again, and she burned the next three, still refusing him a discount. He balked at the price, so she burned the first three books and offered him the remaining six for the same amount. It was she who appeared before King Tarquin offering to sell him her nine books of prophecies for a sum that properly reflected their uniqueness, and which, as I recall, was to be paid in gold. Her do's and don'ts for statesmen were set down in hexameter, and could be consulted only by permission of the Roman Senate. She also had a large roster of celebrity clients and did the occasional channelling job for a politician. The Cumaean Sibyl, like her modern counterparts, counselled the lovelorn, the infertile, the vengeful, the victimized, the credulous, the desperate, and the physically challenged. In 1844, one Peter Parley published an etiquette book with a title that cannot be improved upon: "What to Do, and How to Do It." The nineteenth century was the heyday of the genre, although it has been with us since ancient times.
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