PEOPLE of boastful Asia and of Europe,
2Hear how much, all too true, I am about,
3Through a month many-toned, from my great hall
4To prophesy; no oracle am I
5Of lying Phoebus whom vain men called god,
6And further falsified by calling seer;
7But of the mighty God, whom hands of men
8Formed not like speechless idols carved of stone.
9For he has not for his abode a stone
10Most dumb and toothless to a temple drawn,
11Of immortals a dishonor very sore;
12For he may not be seen from earth nor measured
13By mortal eyes, nor formed by mortal hand;
14He, looking down at once on all, is seen
15Himself by no one; his are murky night,
16And day, and sun, and stars, and moon, and seas
17With fish, and land, and rivers, and the month
18Of springs perennial, creatures meant for life,
19And rains at once producing fruit of field
20And tree and vine and oil. This God a whip
21Struck through my heart within to make me tell
22Truly to men what things have now befallen
23And how much shall befall them yet again
24From the first generation to the eleventh;
25For he himself by bringing them to pass
26Will prove all things. But do thou in all things,
27O people, to the Sibyl give all ear,
28Who pours from hallowed mouth a truthful voice.
29Blessed of men shall they be on the earth
30As many as shall love the mighty God,
31Offering him praise before they drink and eat;
32Trusting in piety. When they behold
33Temples and altars, figures of dumb stones,
34[Stone images and statues made with hands]
35Polluted with the blood of living things
36And sacrifices of four-footed beasts,
37They will reject them all; and they will look
38To the great glory of one God and not
39Commit presumptuous murder nor dispose
40Of stolen gain, which things most horrid are;
41Nor shameful longing for another's bed
42Have they, nor vile and hateful lust of males.
43Their manner, piety, and character
44Shall other men, that love a shameless life,
45Not ever imitate; but, mocking them
46With jest and joke like babes in senselessness,
47They'll falsely charge to them as many deeds
48Blameful and wicked as they do themselves.
49For slow is the whole race of human kind
50To believe. But when judgment of the world
51And mortals comes which God himself shall bring
52Judging at once the impious and the pious,
53Then indeed shall he send the ungodly back
54To lower darkness [and then they shall know
55How much impiety they wrought]; but the pious
56Shall still remain upon the fruitful land,
57God giving to them breath and life and grace.
58But these things all in the tenth generation
59Shall come to pass; and now what things shall be
60From the first generation, those I'll tell.
61First over all mortal shall Assyrians rule,
62And for six generations hold the power
63Of the world, from the time the God of heaven
64Being wroth against the cities and all men
65Sea with a bursting deluge covered earth.
66Them shall the Medes o'erpower, but on the throne
67For two generations only shall exult;
68In which times those events shall come to pass:
69Dark night shall come at the mid hour of day
70And from the heaven the stars and circling moon
71Shall disappear; and earth in tumult shaken
72By a great earthquake shall throw many cities
73And works of men headlong; and from the deep
74They shall peer out the islands of the Sea.
75But when the great Euphrates shall with blood
76Be surging, then shall there be also set
77Between the Medes and Persians dreadful strife
78In battle; and the Medes shall fall and fly
79'Neath Persian spears beyond the mighty water
80Of Tigris. And the Persian power shall be
81Greatest in all the world, and they shall have
82One generation of most prosperous rule.
83And there shall be as many evil deeds
84As men shall wish away--the din of war,
85And murders, and disputes, and banishments,
86And overthrow of towers and waste of cities,
87When Hellas very glorious shall sail
88Over broad Hellespont, and shall convey
89To Phrygia sorrow and to Asia doom.
90And unto Egypt, land of many furrows,
91Shall sorry famine come, and barrenness
92Shall during twenty circling years prevail,
93What time the Nile, corn-nourisher, shall hide
94His dark wave somewhere underneath the earth.
95And there shall come from Asia a great king
96Bearing a spear, with ships innumerable,
97And he shall walk the wet paths of the deep,
98And shall sail after he has cut the mount
99Of lofty summit; him a fugitive
100From battle fearful Asia shall receive.
101And Sicily the wretched shall a stream
102Of powerful fire set all aflame while Etna
103Her flame disgorges; and in the deep chasm
104Down shall the mighty city Croton fall.
105And strife shall be in Hellas; they shall rage
106Against each other, cast down many cities,
107And fighting make an end of many men;
108But equally balanced is the strife with both.
109But, when the race of mortal men shall come
110To the tenth generation, also then
111Upon the Persians shall a servile yoke
112And terror be. But when the Macedonians
113Shall boast the scepter there shall be for Thebes
114An evil conquest from behind, and Carians
115Shall dwell in Tyre, and Tyrians be destroyed.
116And Babylon, great to see but small to fight,
117Shall stand with walls that were in vain hopes built.
118In Bactria Macedonians shall dwell;
119But those from Susa and from Bactria
120Shall all into the land of Hellas flee.
121It shall take place among those yet to be,
122When silver-eddying Pyramus his banks
123O'erpouring, to the sacred isle shall come.
124And Cibyra shall fall and Cyzicus,
125When, earth being shaken by earthquakes, cities fall.
126And sand shall hide all Samos under banks.
127And Delos visible no more, but things
128Of Delos shall all be invisible.
129And to Rhodes shall come evil last, but greatest.
130The Macedonian power shall not abide;
131But from the west a great Italian war
132Shall flourish, under which the world shall bear
133A servile yoke and the Italians serve.
134And thou, O wretched Corinth, thou shalt look
135Sometime upon thy conquest. And thy tower,
136O Carthage, shall press lowly on the ground.
137Wretched Laodicea, thee sometime
138Shall earthquake lay low, casting headlong down,
139But thou, a city firmly set, again
140Shalt stand. O Lycia Myra beautiful,
141Thee never shall the agitated earth
142Set fast; but falling headlong down on earth
143Shalt thou, in manner like an alien, pray
144To flee away into another land,
145When sometime the dark water of the sea
146With thunders and earthquakes shall stop the din
147Of Patara for its impieties.
148Also for thee, Armenia, there remains
149A slavish fate; and there shall also come
150To Solyma an evil blast of war
151From Italy, and God's great temple spoil.
152But when these, trusting folly, shall cast off
153Their piety and murders consummate
154Around the temple, then from Italy
155A mighty king shall like a runaway slave
156Flee over the Euphrates' stream unseen,
157Unknown, who shall some time dare loathsome guilt
158Of matricide, and many other things,
159Having confidence in his most wicked hands.
160And many for the throne with blood
161Rome's soil while he flees over Parthian land.
162And out of Syria shall come Rome's foremost man,
163Who having burned the temple of Solyma,
164And having slaughtered many of the Jews,
165Shall destruction on their great broad land.
166And then too shall an earthquake overthrow
167Both Salamis and Paphos, when dark water
168Shall dash o'er Cyprus washed by many a wave.
169But when from deep cleft of Italian land
170Fire shall come flashing forth in the broad heaven,
171And many cities burn and men destroy,
172And much black ashes shall fill the great sky,
173And small drops like red earth shall fall from heaven,
174Then know the anger of the God of heaven,
175For that they without reason shall destroy
176The nation of the pious. And then strife
177Awakened of war shall come to the West,
178Shall also come the fugitive of Rome,
179Bearing a great spear, having marched across
180Euphrates with his many myriads.
181O wretched Antioch, they shall call thee
182No more a city when around their spears
183Because of thine own follies thou shalt fall.
184And then on Scyros shall a pestilence
185And dreadful battle-din destruction bring.
186Alas, alas! O wretched Cyprus, thee
187Shall a broad wave of the sea cover, thee
188Tossed on high by the whirling stormy winds.
189And into Asia there shall come great wealth,
190Which Rome herself once, plundering, put away
191In her luxurious homes; and twice as much
192And more shall she to Asia render back,
193And then there shall be an excess of war.
194And Carian cities by Maeander's waters,
195Girded with towers and very beautiful,
196Shall by a bitter famine be destroyed,
197When the Maeander his dark water hides.
198But when piety shall perish from mankind,
199And faith and right be hidden in the world,
200. . . Fickle . . . and in unhallowed boldness
201Living shall practice wanton violence,
202And reckless evil deeds, and of the pious
203No one shall make account, but even them all
204From thoughtlessness they utterly destroy
205In childish folly, in their violence
206Exulting and in blood holding their hands;
207Then know thou that God is no longer mild,
208But gnashing with fury and destroying all
209The race of men by conflagration great.
210Ah! miserable mortals, change these things,
211Nor lead the mighty God to wrath extreme;
212But giving up your swords and pointed knives,
213And homicides and wanton violence,
214Wash your whole body in perennial streams,
215And lifting up your hands to heaven seek pardon
216For former deeds and expiate with praise
217Bitter impiety; and God will give
218Repentance; he will not destroy; and wrath
219Will he again restrain, if in your hearts
220Ye all will practice honored piety.
221But if, ill-disposed, ye obey me not,
222But with a fondness for strange lack of sense
223Receive all these things with an evil ear,
224There shall be over all the world a fire
225And greatest omen with sword and with trump
226At sunrise; the whole world shall hear the roar
227And mighty sound. And he shall burn all earth,
228And destroy the whole race of men, and all
229The cities and the rivers and the sea;
230All things he'll burn, and it shall be black dust.
231But when now all things shall have been reduced
232To dust and ashes, and God shall have calmed
233The fire unspeakable which he lit up,
234The bones and ashes of men God himself
235Again will fashion, and he will again
236Raise mortals up, even as they were before.
237And then shall be the judgment, at which God
238Himself as judge shall judge the world again;
239And all who sinned with impious hearts, even them,
240Shall he again hide under mounds of earth
241[Dark Tartarus and Stygian Gehenna].
242But all who shall be pious shall again
243Live on the earth [and (shall inherit there)
244The great immortal God's unwasting bliss,]
245God giving spirit life and joy to them
246[The pious; and they all shall see themselves
247Beholding the sun's sweet and cheering light.
248O happy on the earth shall be that man].