The Sibyl · a new plain-English translation from the original language
He shall fall in his rank, struck down by the flashing iron,
having left the world behind; and after him his sons shall perish.
But when another king shall reign over Rome,
then unsettled nations shall come upon the Romans,
ruinous Ares with a bastard son against the walls of Rome, and then famines, plagues, and raging thunderbolts,
and dread wars and the upheavals of cities
shall come suddenly; and the Syrians shall perish terribly,
for upon them shall come the great wrath of the Most High,
at once the uprising of the toiling Persians,
and the Syrians, joined with the Persians, shall destroy the Romans;
yet they shall not conquer, all the same, by the god-ordained counsel.
Ah, how many born in the East shall flee
with their own possessions to men of foreign speech.
Ah, how much dark blood of men the earth shall drink!
For such a time shall come, when to the dead
the living, uttering blessing from their lips,
shall declare that death is good, and it shall flee from them.
And now for you, wretched Syria, I mourn piteously;
a blow shall come upon you from venom-shooting men,
dread, which you never hoped would come upon you.
And the exile of Rome shall come, lifting his great spear,
crossing the Euphrates together with many myriads,
who shall burn you utterly and lay all to ruin.
Wretched Antioch, they shall never call you a city again,
when through your own follies you fall beneath the spears.
Having plundered and stripped you bare, he shall leave you
roofless, uninhabited; and one who sees you shall suddenly weep.
And you too shall be a trophy of triumph, Hierapolis, and you, Beroea;
weep together with Chalcis over your newly-wounded children.
Ah, all who dwell ... about steep Mount Casius,
and all along Amanus, and all whom the Lycus washes,
and all whom the Marsyas and the silver-eddying Pyramus,
for even to the bounds of Asia they shall carry off spoil,
stripping the cities bare, and they shall take away the whole images of the gods,
and cast the temples down upon the much-nourishing earth.
And one day great ruin shall come upon Gaul and Pannonia,
and upon Mysia and Bithynia, when the warrior shall come.
O Lycians, Lycians, the wolf comes to lap up blood,
when the Sanni come with city-sacking Ares
and the Carpi draw near to do battle against the Ausonians.
And then a bastard son, with shameless daring,
shall utterly destroy the king, and at once he himself shall perish
for his impiety; and after him another again shall rule,
bearing his rule under new names; but swiftly he too shall fall,
struck down by mighty Ares with the flashing iron.
And again the world shall be a world disordered, with men perishing
by plague and by war; and the Persians, into the toil of Ares,
shall again rush raging upon the Ausonians.
And then there shall be flight for the Romans; but thereafter
the priest-king, the very last, sun-sent, shall come,