The Sibyl · a new plain-English translation from the original language
in beauty and in wealth; a terrible yoke it shall lay upon your neck.
Then a Lydian earthquake shall lay waste the land of the Persians,
bringing to Europe and to Asia the most dreadful of griefs.
And the deadly king of the Sidonians, and the war of others
faring over the sea, shall bring deadly destruction on the Samians.
With the blood of men the ground shall stream down into the sea, of those
who perish; and wives together with their splendid-robed daughters
shall wail aloud their own shameful outrage,
some for the dead, others for their perishing sons.
A sign for Cyprus: an earthquake shall waste its ravines,
and Hades shall hold many souls together in one company.
Tralles, neighbor of Ephesus, shall be brought down by earthquake,
its well-built walls and the heavy-hearted people within them;
the earth shall rain down scalding water, and from it
the burdened ground itself shall drink; and there shall be a smell of sulfur.
And Samos in its season shall build royal halls.
Italy, no foreign war of Ares shall come upon you,
but kindred blood, much-groaning and not slight,
much-spoken-of and shameless, shall lay you waste.
And you yourself, stretched out beside your own still-warm ashes,
unaware, shall slay yourself upon your own breast.
You shall be no mother of good men, but a nurse of wild beasts.
But when from Italy a ravaging man shall come,
then, Laodicea, falling prone,
glorious city of the Carians beside the wondrous water of the Lycus,
you shall fall silent, having mourned your great-boasting father.
And the Thracian Crobyzi shall rise up along the Haemus.
For the Campanians there shall be a clamor, because of the fruitful
famine of many years; long having mourned their father.
Corsica and Sardinia, by the great storm-blasts of winter
and by the blows of the holy God, into the depths of the sea
shall plunge under the swell, with their seafaring offspring.
Alas, how many maidens shall Hades take to wife,
and how many unburied youths the deep shall keep in its care.
Alas for infant children adrift on the sea, and for wealth turned to heavy grief.
O blessed land of the Mysians, a royal race shall suddenly
be raised up. Yet in truth it shall not endure for long,
Carthage. And for the Galatians there shall be much-groaning misery.
And upon Tenedos too shall come an evil, the last, but the greatest.
And bronze Sicyon with its baying, and you, Corinth,
shall boast above all; and the flute alike shall cry aloud.
When at last my spirit ceased its god-inspired song,
again within my breast the voice of the great God
took its stand, and bade me prophesy across the earth.
Alas for the race of Phoenician men and women,
and for all the cities by the sea — not one of you
shall stand before the light of the sun in the common day,
nor shall the count of your life or your people exist any longer,
in payment for the unjust tongue, the lawless and unclean life,
which all wore away, opening an unclean mouth,