The Sibyl · a new plain-English translation from the original language
having completed a hundred nine-year cycles, and you will pay for everything;
and then, Persia, you will be given as a slave to the Medes,
perishing under blows through mighty battles.
Straightway there will be evil for the Persians and the Assyrians,
and for all Egypt, for Libya, and for the Ethiopians,
for the Carians, the Pamphylians, and all other mortals.
And then he will give the kingly rule to his grandsons,
who again will ravage nations with much plunder,
seizing the whole earth, showing no pity.
Wretched, the Persians will wail their dirge of grief by the Tigris.
Egypt will water her wide land with tears.
And then upon you, land of Media, many evils will be worked
by the wealthy king born of India, until you pay for everything,
all that you did before with a shameless heart.
Alas for you, Median nation — after that you will be enslaved
to the men of Ethiopia, beyond the land of Meroë;
adding seven to a hundred years from the beginning
you will complete, wretched one, and set your neck beneath the yoke.
And then a dark-skinned, gray-haired, great-hearted
Indian king will afterward arise, who many evils
will inflict upon the East through mighty battles;
and you above all he will outrage, and ruin beyond all others.
But when he has reigned twenty years
and seven more added, then indeed of the kingly rule
every nation will grow frenzied and proclaim its freedom,
leaving the yoke of slavery for three single years.
But it will come again, and set beneath the yoke
every nation of men once more, under harsh rule, as before it was
enslaved to the king, and willingly it will submit.
There will be great peace throughout the whole world.
And then for the Assyrians there will be a great king, a man
who will rule and persuade all to speak in accord with his will,
all that God has lawfully ordained; and then before him
all kings, long-haired and crested with spear-points,
will shudder, terrified and speechless — the mighty ones and the fair —
they will serve this man through the counsels of the great God.
For he will persuade all things by word, and subdue all,
and the temple of the great God and the lovely altar
he himself will build in strength, and cast down the idols;
the tribes and the offspring of the fathers and the infant children
he will gather into one, encircling them as dwellers within;
and he shall bear a name whose number is two hundred,
and will show the signs of the eighteenth letter's line.
But when, as the tens revolve, he shall reach
two beyond and five more, coming to the end of that span of time,
there will be as many kings as there are tribes of mortals,
as many peoples, as many cities, as many islands,
the blessed continents and the fields rich in glorious fruit.
One among these shall be a great king, leader of men;
and to him many great-hearted kings will yield,