The Sibyl · a new plain-English translation from the original language
He will act, peering about — he who cut short the onrush of fire
in burning Troy — and hurrying through the crowd,
in terror he will cross the fearsome land and sea.
He will hold a name of three syllables, for its opening
letter reveals no common man, but the highest of men.
And then he will raise up the mighty city of the Latins.
In his fifteenth year, in the depths of the brine,
perishing in the waters, he will meet the end that is death.
But not even dead will the nations of men forget him;
for his line will rule after him, over all,
as far as the Euphrates and Tigris, between the rivers
of the Assyrian land, where the Parthian once held sway.
It shall be for those still to come, when all this happens.
And a certain old man, wise, will again be a singer,
whom all will call the wisest among mortals,
by whose noble mind the whole world will be schooled;
for he will set down in summary both power and thought.
And clearly he will write many unutterable things, here and there,
mastering my own words in meters and in speech;
for he himself will be the very first to unroll my books,
and after that will hide them, and show them to men no more
until the end of ruinous death, the close of life.
But when all this has been brought to pass, as I have said,
the Greeks will again make war upon one another;
Assyrians, Arabs, and quiver-bearing Medes as well,
Persians and Sicilians and Lydians will rise up,
Thracians, Bithynians, and those who by the streams of the Nile
dwell in the land of the richest grain; and turmoil
the undying God will set upon them all together. But most terribly
a bastard Assyrian man, an Ethiopian, will come without warning,
bearing the heart of a beast, and will cut clean through the isthmus,
peering about, and pressing on against all, he will sail across the sea.
And then very much will happen to you, faithless Greece.
Ah, woe to you, suffering Greece, how much you must lament!
When eighty-seven years have run their course,
you will be the wretched leavings of a war of all tribes, and terrible.
There again the Macedonians will be a torment to Greece,
and will destroy all Thrace, and the toil of Ares
upon the islands and mainlands and the war-loving Toratroi. —
He will stand among the front-fighters, and he will share this name,
ten times fifty in number — that is the letter it signifies.
At first he will be short-lived; but the greatest
kingdom, boundless over the earth, he will leave behind.
But he himself will fall by a spear-bearing man of evil counsel,
having lived in Syria, ruling as no one ever did.
And after him his great-hearted son will rule in turn,
the first letter of whose name begins it — his line's descent will continue.
Not truly of Zeus, not of Ammon, will they all alike
call him true-born, but will falsely make him out the bastard son of Cronus' child.
And he in turn will sack the cities of many mortal men;