The Sibyl · a new plain-English translation from the original language
But when for you, luxurious one, three times five kings have come to be,
having enslaved the world from the rising to the setting sun,
there shall be a gray-headed lord bearing a name akin to the sea,
surveying the world with polluted foot, furnishing gifts,
having gold in greatest abundance and silver more than the enemies'
he has gathered, and having stripped it bare he will squander it.
And he will take part in all the mysteries of the magicians' shrines,
he will display a child as a god, he will dissolve every object of worship,
and from the beginning he will throw open to all the mysteries of delusion.
A doleful season from then on, when Ailinos himself shall perish.
And once the people will say: "Your great power, city, shall fall,"
knowing straightway the evil day approaching that is to come.
And then together they will mourn, foreseeing your
most pitiable fate, fathers and infant children;
wretched, they will wail their doleful dirges by the banks of the Tiber.
After him three shall rule, each holding the very last day,
having filled up the name of the god of heaven,
whose power is now and unto all the ages.
One, an old man, shall hold the scepter for a long while,
a most pitiable king, who all the wealth of the world
will shut up and guard within his houses, so that when he returns
from the ends of the earth, the fiery matricide fugitive,
giving all these things to everyone, he will set great wealth upon Asia.
And then you shall mourn, having stripped off
the broad-purple light of your rulers and put on mourning garb,
O boastful queen, offspring of Latin Rome;
no longer shall the glory of your great pride be yours,
nor shall you ever be set upright again, ill-fated one, but you shall be laid low;
for the glory of the eagle-bearing legions shall fall.
Where then is your power? What land will be your ally,
enslaved lawlessly by your own vain follies?
For then there will be confusion of mortals over all the earth,
when the Almighty himself, coming, judges from his throne
the souls of the living and the dead, and the whole world.
And parents will not be dear to children, nor children to parents,
on account of impiety and hopeless affliction.
From then on for you: gnashing of teeth, scattering, and capture,
when the fall of cities comes, and chasms open in the earth;
and when the purple dragon comes upon the waves
with a belly full of multitudes, and shall feed on your children,
while famine is coming and civil war,
the end of the world is near, and the last day,
and judgment of the immortal God upon the approved and called.
First there will be the relentless wrath of the Romans,
a blood-drinking season, and a wretched life shall come.
Woe to you, land of Italy, great barbarian nation,
you did not perceive from where, naked and unworthy, you came
to the light of the sun, that to that same place again
naked you shall depart, and afterward come to judgment,
as one who judged unjustly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .