The Sibyl · a new plain-English translation from the original language
into all the ages of hurrying time.
and then the unappeasable wrath of the men of Latium—
three shall bring Rome to ruin by a piteous fate.
and all men shall perish beneath their own roofs,
when from heaven a fiery cataract shall pour down.
woe is me, wretched one, when shall that day come,
and the judgment of the immortal, the great king god?
even now you are still building cities, and adorning them all
with temples and stadiums, marketplaces, golden images,
of silver and of stone, that you may come to a bitter day.
for it shall come, when the reek of brimstone shall pass
through all mankind. but I will declare each thing in turn,
in how many cities men bring evil upon themselves.
and out of the Sebastenes shall come Beliar hereafter,
and he shall set up the height of mountains, he shall halt the sea,
the great fiery sun and the shining moon,
and he shall raise the dead and work many signs
for men; but nothing of it shall come to fulfillment,
but he shall lead men astray, and he shall lead many astray,
the faithful and the chosen, Hebrews and lawless men and other
men besides, who have not yet heard the word of God.
but when the threats of the great God draw near,
and a blazing power comes through the surge upon the earth,
it shall burn up Beliar and all the arrogant men
who put their faith in him;
and then indeed the world under the hands of a woman
shall be ruled, and obedient in everything.
there, when a widowed woman holds sway across the entire earth,
and shall cast gold and silver into the divine sea,
and bronze too, and the iron of men who live but for a day,
shall cast into the deep, then indeed every element
shall be widowed of the world, when God who dwells in the sky
shall roll up the heaven, as a scroll is rolled up;
and the whole many-shaped vault of the sky shall fall upon the holy earth
and upon the sea; and there shall flow a cataract of raging fire,
unwearied, and it shall burn the earth, and burn the sea,
and the vault of heaven, and the days, and creation itself
it shall melt into one and refine to purity.
and no more the joyous spheres of the luminaries,
no night, no dawn, no more the many days you fret over,
no spring, no summer, no winter, no autumn.
and then indeed the judgment of the great God shall come into the midst
of the great age, when all these things come to pass.
woe, woe for the sailing waters and for all the dry land!
for the sun rising, which shall not again go down,
all the world shall obey it as it rises anew;
wherefore he himself first knew it, and its power.
but when the threats of the great God are fulfilled,
which once he threatened against mortals, when they built the tower
in the land of Assyria; and all of them were of one speech