The Sibyl · a new plain-English translation from the original language
she rejoiced, her head crowned, and fell upon the earth.
But he who holds the land of the Persians will make war,
and killing every man, will lay waste the whole of life,
so that only a third portion remains to wretched mortals.
He himself will fly in from the west with a light leap,
besieging the whole earth, laying all of it waste.
But when he holds mighty height and unbearable boldness,
he will come, wanting even to destroy the city of the blessed.
And some king, sent from God against this man,
will destroy all the great kings and the best of men.
Then thus shall come judgment upon men from the imperishable one.
Alas for you, wretched heart, why do you stir me up
to make plain to Egypt its grievous multitude of rulers?
Go toward the sunrise, to the mindless generations of the Persians,
and make plain to them what is now and what is yet to be.
The stream of the river Euphrates will bring a flood,
and it will destroy Persians and Iberians and Babylonians,
the war-loving Massagetae too, trusters in the bow.
The whole of Asia, blazing with fire, will flash all the way to the islands.
Pergamum, once so revered, will perish cluster by cluster,
and Pitane will appear utterly desolate among men.
All of Lesbos will sink into the deep abyss to be lost.
Smyrna, rolling down along the cliffs, will one day weep,
she who was once revered and glorious, will be utterly destroyed.
The Bithynians will weep for their own land turned to ash,
and for great Syria and many-tribed Phoenicia.
Alas for you, Lycia, what evils are contrived against you
by the sea, rising up of itself against your grievous country,
to flood with a cruel earthquake and bitter waters
the fragrant land of Lycia and its once sweet-breathing shore.
There will be terrible wrath also upon Phrygia because of grief,
for whose sake Rhea, wife of Zeus, came and remained there.
The sea will destroy the race of the Taurians and the barbarian nation;
and it will lay the Lapiths low upon the ground across the land.
The deep-eddying river will destroy the land of Thessaly,
the deep-flowing Peneus, the shapes of beasts up from the earth—
the Epidanus, claiming once to have begotten the shapes of beasts.
Poets will wail for thrice-wretched Greece,
when from the isthmus of Italy he strikes the sinew
of great Rome — a great god-like king, a man,
whom, they say, Zeus himself begot, and queenly Hera;
one who, with an all-tuneful voice, sweet-sounding hymns
performing on the stage, will destroy many along with his wretched mother.
He will flee from Babylon, a dreadful and shameless lord,
whom all mortals hate, and the best of men as well;
for he destroyed many and laid hands upon the womb,
he sinned against wives, and was fashioned out of foul stock.
He will go among the Medes, unto the Persian rulers' thrones,
the very first he longed for and in whom he placed his fame,
lurking among these evils, bound for a truthful nation—