Empires:Rome- The Sybil's Prophecies & The East

The prophecies of the Sibyl were a carefully guarded state secret in Rome, kept in the Temple of Jupiter. However, the Romans were not the only people in the world to receive a visit from her-perhaps multitudes of 'hers' (likely a lot of hims using the name, Sibyl as a pseudo-both for anonymity and their own personal safety). The prophecies she had given the Greeks and the Jews had been told far and wide. In a very sinister prophecy, she had told of a time when Roman would take up arms against Roman, and in these prognostications the violence would not be confined to the capital: "Not foreign invaders, Italy, but your own sons will rape you, a brutal interminable gang-rape, punishing you, famous country, for all your many depravities, leaving you prostrated, stretched out among the burning ashes. Self-slaughterer! No longer the mother of upstanding men, but rather the nurse of savage, ravening beasts!"

Scholars and historians have dated this and other prophecies to times near the 140s BC. An interesting sidebar to these prophecies is that the ones kept by the Romans seemed to suggest the future could be altered if certain actions were taken, while the prophetic books in the East appeared to have had a very deterministic view of the future. Everything was set in stone and nothing could be changed. Of course, with the times that these prophecies of Rome's destruction were dated, it would not have taken a true prophetess to describe Rome's hegemony over the world of the time. Also, the way some of these prophecies were worded seemed to have been written by someone who could only imagine Rome being brought down by internal strife-as her power in regards to other nations seemed invincible.

Before the catastrophes for the cities of Carthage and Corinth in 146BC; the Greeks had been somewhat confused by Rome's guarantees of freedom. The Greeks tended to think of the Romans as barbarians (behind their backs) and the Romans thought of the Greeks as contentious children who needed a strong hand to keep them in line. Until the destruction of Corinth, the Greeks had interpreted Roman guarantees of 'freedom' in a much larger sense than the Republic had intended. No reading between the lines of diplomatic language was needed after 146 BC. The treaties of friendship between Rome and her allies were now as sharply defined as a razor blade's edge, and as ill-advised to play with. The lessons Rome had so brutally taught had not been lost on anybody throughout the Meditteranean and to the east, far beyond the Greek kingdoms into Asia Minor. Monarchies throughout the region were always trying to ponder what Rome's true intentions were and made sure they were in perfect harmony with the tune the Republic was singing. The last king of Pergamum, Attalos III, who ruled over a Greek city controlling most of what is modern western Turkey, went as far as one could go in this new era of 'friendship' and 'cooperation'. In 133BC he left his entire kingdom to Rome in his will! As obsequious and benevolent an act as this may have seemed, it started a chain of events rolling (some involving the Gracchi brothers) that were to have some very horrific consequences for Rome.