The Sibyl · a new plain-English translation from the original language
and pay for whatever each did in mortal life.
And then indeed all shall pass through the burning river
and through unquenchable flame; and the just
shall all be saved; but the impious upon them shall perish
for whole ages — all who did evil before,
and who committed murders, and all who were accomplices to them,
liars and thieves and treacherous, dreadful home-wreckers,
lurkers at another's table, adulterers pouring out foul words,
terrible men, violent, lawless, and idolaters;
and all who abandoned the great immortal God,
and became blasphemers and plunderers of the pious,
betrayers of trust and destroyers of righteous men;
and all who, before deceitful and shameless two-faced men —
elders, venerable ones, ministers — take notice…
showing them respect, judge unjustly, favoring others,
persuaded by false and deceitful reports . . . . . .
more destructive than leopards or wolves, and worst of all;
and all who are greatly arrogant, and usurers,
who gather interest upon interest through their houses
and ruin orphans and widows in every way;
and all who give to widows and orphans
out of unjust deeds — and those who, giving from their own labors,
then reproach the gift; and all who left their parents in old age
unpaid entirely, not returning nourishment to their parents
in exchange, and rather were disobedient
and answered back with harsh words against their begetters;
and all who took pledges of trust and then denied them;
and servants who turned against their masters;
and again those who defiled the flesh with wantonness,
and all who loosed the virgin girdle
mingling in secret, and as many as cast from the womb the burden
they carry, and as many as throw away their offspring unlawfully;
sorcerers and sorceresses, and along with them these too —
the wrath of the heavenly and incorruptible God
shall drive to the pillar, where round about the whole circle
a tireless river of fire flows; and all these together
the angels of the immortal God who is forever
with fiery whips and with chains of fire,
binding them fast with unbreakable bonds from above,
shall punish most terribly; then in the dead of night
they shall be thrown to beasts of Tartarus, born
of many fearsome kinds, where the darkness is boundless.
But when they have inflicted many punishments
on all whose hearts were evil, then afterward again
out of the great river a fiery wheel shall roll round
upon them, because reckless deeds were their concern.
And then they shall wail, one apart from another, far off,
in most piteous fate — fathers and infant children,
mothers and their nursing babes, all in tears.
Nor shall there be for them a surfeit of tears, nor even a voice