The Sibyl · a new plain-English translation from the original language
It shall come to pass among the Bruges and the gold-rich Galatians,
Ocean roaring, filled with much blood.
For they themselves wrought evil against the children of God,
when the Phoenician king led against the Sidonians a Galican
multitude out of Syria, vast; and you he shall slaughter,
you yourself, Ravenna, and shall lead the way to murder.
Indians, take no courage, nor you, great-hearted Ethiopians;
for when the wheel of the Axis brings round these things, and the Goat-Horned
and the Bull among the Twins circle the midst of heaven,
and the Virgin rises up, and the Sun about his brow
having fixed a girdle wide-encompassing shall lead the way,
there shall be a great burning of the sky upon the earth,
and among the warring stars a strange new nature, so that all
the land of the Ethiopians shall perish in fire and groaning.
Weep too, Corinth, for the bitter ruin within you;
for when the three sister Fates with twisted threads
spinning shall drag him aloft by guile along the shore of the isthmus,
him fleeing, until all men look upon him,
him who long ago cut the rock with much-wrought bronze,
he shall also destroy and cut down your land, as has been foreordained.
For to him God gave the strength to accomplish
such deeds as no former king among all men had done;
first, from three heads together with a blow he shall set up
roots, and give them mightily to others to devour,
so that the impious king's own kin should eat their flesh.
For upon all men lie murder and terrors
on account of that mighty city and its just inhabitants,
ever preserved, whom Providence held foremost.
O unstable and ill-counseled one, girt about with evil dooms,
beginning of toil and great end for men
of creation now harmed, now again saved by the Fates,
O insolence, ringleader of evils and great affliction to men,
who among mortals ever longed for you, who from within was not enraged at you?
In you a king lost his solemn life, cast down.
All things you disposed evilly, and drowned the whole in evil,
and through you the fair folds of the world were changed.
Against our strife, perhaps, you cast these last things forward;
how do you plead? I shall persuade you, and if I blame you, I shall say why:
there was once among men a shining radiance of the sun,
the scattered ray of the prophets' common libation;
a honey-dripping tongue poured a fair draught for all mortals,
showed it forth and set it before them, and brought forth gentle things for all.
For this cause, narrow-counseled ringleader of the greatest evils,
both the beak and mourning shall come on that day.
Beginning of toil and great end for men
of creation now harmed, now again saved by the Fates,
hear the bitter, ill-sounding report, a woe to men.
But whenever the Persian land shall hold back from war,
from plague and from groaning, then on that day it shall be
the blessed race of the Jews, divine and heavenly.