The Latin and Greek reads:

‘Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere,
et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις; respondebat illa: ἀποθανεῖν θέλω.’

Translation:

“For I myself saw the Sibyl of Cumae with my own eyes hanging in a jar,
and when the boys asked her: ‘Sibyl, what do you want?’
she replied: ‘I want to die.’”

This line is the epigraph of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.

Who is the Sibyl of Cumae?

The Sibyl was an ancient prophetess, most famously associated with Apollo. The Cumaean Sibyl appears in Virgil’s Aeneid, where she guides Aeneas through the Underworld. But over time, her myth twisted into something more tragic.

According to legend (and captured in Petronius’s Satyricon, from which this quote is lifted), the Sibyl asked the gods for eternal life—but forgot to ask for eternal youth. So she aged… and aged… and aged. Eventually, her body shrivelled to the size of a locust, and she was kept in a glass jar (ampulla), hanging in a temple, whispering prophecies.

Her only remaining desire? Death.