The Sibyl · a new plain-English translation from the original language
and Crete a plain of ruin. Cyprus shall have a great affliction,
and Paphos shall wail a dread fate, so terrible to conceive,
and Salamis, that great city, shall suffer a great affliction —
now barren wasteland shall it be again upon the shore,
and no small swarm of locusts shall utterly destroy the Cyprian land.
Toward Tyre, ill-fated mortals, you shall weep as you look on.
Phoenicia, a dread wrath awaits you, until you fall
into evil ruin, so that even the Sirens shall truly weep.
It shall be in the fifth generation, when the destruction ceases
of Egypt, when shameless kings intermarry;
and the tribes of the Pamphylians shall settle into Egypt,
throughout Macedon and across Asia and through the Lycian lands
a world-maddened war, drenched in blood, in the dust,
which the king of Rome and the lords of the west shall bring to an end.
When the wintry blast drips down its snow,
as the great river freezes and the greatest of lakes,
at once the barbarian horde shall march into the land of Asia,
and shall destroy the dread race of Thracians as though it were nothing.
And then heart-devouring mortals shall eat their own parents,
worn down by famine, and shall tear apart their food.
Out of every house the wild beasts shall devour the table,
and beasts and birds alike shall devour all mortal men,
and the ocean shall be filled with the evil of war,
bloody with flesh and with the blood of the senseless.
Then such feebleness shall come upon the earth
that one may count the tally of men and the reckoning of women.
Endlessly shall the wretched generation wail at the world's end,
as the sun goes down, that it may never rise again,
remaining in the ocean, to be plunged beneath its waters —
for it has seen the impure wickedness of many mortals.
And there shall be gloom-darkness about the great heaven itself,
and no small mist shall wrap round the folds of the cosmos
a second time; but afterward the light of God shall lead the way
for the good men, all who have sung the praises of God.
Isis, thrice-wretched goddess, you shall remain by the streams of the Nile,
alone, a voiceless madwoman on the sands of Acheron,
and no memory of you shall remain any longer in all the earth.
And you, Sarapis, lying upon a heap of idle stones,
you shall lie a mighty ruin in Egypt, thrice-wretched.
And all who brought their longing for Egypt to you, all of them
shall weep for you bitterly, having set you as an undying god in their hearts;
they shall know you for nothing, all who have sung the praises of God.
And then some priest, a man clad in linen, shall say:
"Come, let us raise a beautiful shrine to the one true God;
come, let us change the dread law handed down from our fathers,
for the sake of which, offering processions and rites
to gods of stone and earthenware, they understood nothing.
Let us turn our souls, singing the praises of the undying God,
the very begetter, who has come to be everlasting,
the ruler of all things, the true one, the king,