The Sibyl · a new plain-English translation from the original language
fair and mighty, of the heavy-strengthed river.
And many earthquakes will strike the Propontis and the Phrygian lands;
and a king renowned, by his own fate,
will lose his life to a wasting sickness of death.
After him two kings will rule as lords,
one bearing the number three hundred, the other three;
for this cause he will destroy many beyond the city,
of seven-hilled Rome, for the sake of a mighty kingdom.
And then evil will come upon the Senate, nor will it be escaped,
since the angered king holds wrath against it.
A sign will appear before all people on earth:
rains beyond measure and snows will come, and hail
will destroy the fruits of the harvest over the boundless earth.
And they themselves in turn will fall, overcome in wars,
by mighty Ares, for the sake of war among the Italians.
And then again another king of many devices will rule,
gathering every army and distributing riches
to the bronze-corseleted men for the sake of war; but then
the Nile, beyond many-eared Libya of the mainland,
will water for two years the black soil of Egypt
and the plowland; and famine will hold all things fast,
and war and robbers and murders and slaughters of men.
And many cities again, by warring men,
will be destroyed, laid low by the hands of an army;
and he himself will fall in turn, betrayed to the gleaming iron.
After him, one who obtained rule among the number three hundred
will rule over the Romans and over overweening men;
he will stretch out the soul-destroying spear against the Armenians,
the Parthians, the Assyrians, and the war-loving Persians.
And then again there will be the founding of splendid-built Rome,
exalted in adornment with gold and amber and silver and ivory;
and a great people within it,
of all the East and of the wealthy West,
will dwell there; and a king will set upon it
other laws; and after him, on a boundless island,
destructive death and mighty fate will receive him.
And another man will rule, of the ten threes, like a beast,
shaggy-haired and grim, who will be of Greek stock.
And then the much-nourishing city of the Molossians in Phthia,
and famous Larissa, and by the banks of the Peneius—
and then there will be an uprising of horse-grazing Scythia.
And a dread war will be by the waters of the Maeotic lake,
at the outpourings by the farthest mouth of the spring
of well-watered Phasis, along the asphodel meadow;
many indeed will fall by the hands of mighty warriors.
Ah, wretched men, however many bronze-armed Ares seizes.
And then a king, having utterly destroyed the Scythian race,
will die, releasing his life by his own fate.
And another in turn will rule, of the four, raised up thereafter,
a dread man, whom all who drink the thickest