Sibyl

Various women in Antiquity who were thought to have the ability to prophesy or predict the future.

"For not every form of insanity is a disaster, or Horace would not have asked, 'Or is it fond insanity deceiving me?' And Plato would not have counted the frenzy of poets, seers, and lovers amongst life's chief blessings, nor would the sybil have called the great undertaking of Aeneas insane. The nature of insanity is surely twofold. One kind is sent from hell by the vengeful furies whenever they let loose their snakes and assail the hearts of men with lust for war, insatiable thirst for gold, the disgrace of forbidden love, parricide, incest, sacrilege, or some other sort of evil, or when they pursue the guilty, conscience-stricken soul with their avenging spirits and flaming brands of terror. The other is quite different, desirable above everything, and is known to come from me [folly]. It occurs whenever some happy mental aberration frees the soul from its anxious cares and at the same time restores it by the addition of manifold delights. This is the sort of delusion Cicero longs for as a great gift of the gods in a letter to Atticus, for it would have the power to free him from awareness of his great trouble. Horace's Argive too was on to the right thing. His insanity was only sufficient to keep him sitting whole days alone in the theatre, laughing and clapping and enjoying himself because he believed marvelous plays were being acted on the stage, when in fact there was nothing at all."

Erasmus, Praise of Folly, (1509)

[translated by Betty Radice, notes by A. H. T. Levi (1993)].