The Sibyl · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Whenever swords appear in the starry sky
at night, seen shining toward evening and toward dawn,
at once dust too will be borne down from heaven
onto all the earth, and the sun's radiance
will fail at midday, and from heaven the moon's
rays will shine out and fall back down upon the earth
with blood and dripping drops, and a sign will come out of the rocks;
and in a cloud you will see a battle of foot and horse,
like a hunt of wild beasts, dim as through mist.
This end of war God who dwells in heaven brings to pass.
But all must offer sacrifice to the great king.
These things I tell you, having left behind Assyria's
long Babylonian walls, frenzy-driven, a fire sent into Greece,
prophesying to all mortals the wrath of God—
so that I might prophesy divine riddles to mortals.
And mortals throughout Greece will call me of another homeland,
shamelessly born from Erythrae; and some will say I am a Sibyl
born of Circe as mother and Gnostos as father,
a raving liar; yet once every one of these things is fulfilled,
then you will remember me, and no one any longer
will call me mad, but prophetess of the great God.
For he did not reveal to me what he once revealed to my forebears;
but the things that happened first, God recounted to me,
and all that came after, God set within my mind,
so that I might prophesy the things to come and the things that are
and speak them to mortals. For when the world was flooded
with waters, and one man alone, of good repute, was left,
sailing upon the waters in a house of hewn timber
with beasts and birds, so that the world might be filled again—
of that man I was daughter-in-law, and from his blood I came to be;
to him the first things happened, and all the last things have been shown;
so let all these true things be spoken from my mouth.