The Sibyl · a new plain-English translation from the original language
The Eighth Word
As great wrath comes upon a disobedient world
for the last age I show forth the anger of God,
prophesying to all men, city by city.
Ever since that tower collapsed and human speech
were divided into many mortal dialects,
first the kingdom of Egypt, then that of the Persians,
the Medes, the Ethiopians, and Assyrian Babylon,
then Macedonia, boasting its great pride,
fifth then the famed, lawless kingdom of the Italians
will show to all mortals the last and many evils
and will exhaust the toils of men across all the earth.
It will lead untiring kings of nations to the west
and set laws upon the peoples and subject all things.
Late grind the mills of God, yet grind the fine flour.
Then fire will destroy everything and render to fine dust
the peaks of high-crested mountains, and of all flesh.
The beginning of all evils is love of money and folly.
For there will be a lust for deceitful gold and silver;
for mortals prized nothing above these,
not the light of the sun, not heaven, nor the sea,
not the broad-backed earth, from which all things grow,
not God who gives all things, begetter of all,
not faith in these things, nor piety did they prefer.
It is the fountain of impiety and the guide of disorder,
the contriver of wars, the enemy grief of peace,
setting parents against children and children against parents.
Nor will marriage ever at all be honored apart from gold.
The earth will have boundaries, and every sea its guards,
deceitfully divided among all who hold gold;
so, wishing for ages to hold the earth that feeds many,
they will plunder the poor, that they themselves,
gaining more territory, may enslave them through arrogance.
And if the monstrous earth, from the starry heaven,
did not hold her throne far off, the light would not be equal for men,
but would exist bought with gold for the wealthy,
while God was preparing another age for the poor.
There will come to you at last from above, equally, high-necked Rome,
a heavenly blow, and you will first bend your neck,
and you will be razed to the ground, and fire will consume you wholly
as you lie prostrate on your own foundations, and wealth will perish,
and wolves and foxes will dwell in your foundations.
And then you will be utterly desolate, as though you had never been.
Where then will be your Palladium? What god will save you,
one of gold, or of stone, or of bronze? Or where then for you
the decrees of the senate? Where the offspring of Rhea or Cronos
or of Zeus, and of all whom you revered,
lifeless demons, idols of dead men who have perished,
whose tombs, to her sorrow, Crete will hold as her boast,
worshipping with rites senseless corpses on their thrones.