The Sibyl · a new plain-English translation from the original language
First of all mortals the Assyrians shall rule,
holding mastery of the world for six generations from the beginning,
from the time when the heavenly God, in his anger,
over those very cities and over all mankind
made the sea cover the earth, when the flood broke forth.
Them the Medes shall overthrow and glory upon their thrones,
to whom two generations only are given, in which these deeds shall be:
there shall be night, dark night, in the middle of the day's hour;
the stars shall fail from heaven, and the orbs of the moon;
and the earth, shaken by the shock of a great earthquake,
shall lay low many cities and the works of men;
and then from the deep the islands shall rise above the sea.
But when the mighty Euphrates runs red and overflows,
then indeed for Medes and Persians dread battle-strife
shall be joined in war; and beneath the spears of the Persians the Medes,
falling, shall flee beyond the great water of the Tigris.
And the power of the Persians shall be greatest of the whole world,
to whom one generation of rich and prosperous rule is appointed.
And there shall be evil deeds, all that men would pray against,
battles and murders and factions and flights,
the toppling of towers and the uprooting of cities,
when Greece, greatly boasting, upon the broad Hellespont
shall sail, bearing heavy doom to the Phrygians and to Asia.
But upon Egypt, of many furrows and rich in wheat,
famine and barrenness, as the years roll round,
shall come for twenty years, when the corn-nourishing Nile
shall hide its dark water somewhere else beneath the earth.
And there shall come from Asia a king, lifting up a great spear,
with ships beyond counting; the wet paths of the deep
he shall march on foot, and shall sail, having cut through a high-crested mountain.
Him, a fugitive from war, wretched Asia shall receive.
And wretched Sicily entirely he shall set ablaze
with a stream of great fire belched forth from the flame of Etna;
and Croton, a great city, shall fall into the deep flood.
And there shall be strife in Greece; and, maddened against one another,
they shall lay low many cities, and shall destroy many
in fighting; and the strife shall be evenly balanced between them.
But when the race of mortal men comes to the tenth generation,
then upon the Persians shall come the yoke of slavery and fear.
But when the Macedonians shall glory in the scepter,
there shall also be, afterward, the evil capture of Thebes,
and Carian folk shall make their homes in Tyre, while the Tyrians perish.
And sand shall cover the whole of Samos beneath its shores,
and Delos shall no longer be Delos, and all of Delos' things unclear.
And Babylon, great to look upon, but small in battle,
shall stand, walled about on hopes that come to nothing.
The Macedonians shall settle Bactra; and men from Bactra
and from Susa every one of them shall run away into Hellas.
It shall be for generations yet to come, when Pyramus of the silver eddies,
pouring forth its shore, shall reach the sacred island.