Book 4
1 Hear, O ye people of vaunting Asia and Europe,
2 what prophetic strains of truth I purpose to pour forth, through the honied speech of my mouth from our shrine.
3 No oracle-monger I of a false Phoebus whom vain
4 men have called a god and falsely termed a seer;
5 but the prophetess of the mighty God whom men’s hands fashioned not,
6 like to dumb idols of polished stones.
7 For He has not as His habitation a stone set up in a temple,
8 dumb and helpless, a bugbear of many woes to mortals.
9 But He is one whom none can see from earth, nor measure
10 with mortal eyes, seeing He was not fashioned by mortal hand.
11 With all-embracing view He beholds all, yet Himself is seen by none.
12 His is the murky night and day, the sun,
13 the stars and moon, and sea the haunt of fish;
14 and land and rivers and the source of perennial streams,
15 creatures ordained for sustaining life and showers that cause the cornfield fruit to grow,
16 and trees and vines and olive trees.
17 He has driven a goad right through my heart
18 to tell out exactly all that is happening to men now and all that is to happen,
19 reaching from the first generation to the tenth.
20 For He shall vindicate all
21 by bringing it to pass. But do thou, O people, hearken in all things to the Sibyl
22 as she pours forth true speech from holy mouth.
23 Happy shall those men be throughout the earth who shall truly love the Mighty God, blessing Him
24 before eating and drinking, staunch in their godliness.
25 Who, when they see them, shall disown all temples
26 and altars, vain erections of senseless stones,
27 befouled with constant blood of living things and sacrifices
28 of four-footed beasts. But they shall look to the great glory of the one God
29 neither committing dastard murder, nor bartering for dishonest
30 gain, which things are altogether evil.
31 Nor do they set their foul affection on another’s bed,
32 [nor on the hateful and hideous abuse of males].
33 Whose conversation and godliness and manners other men
34 will never emulate, men whose affections are set on shamelessness.
35 But mocking them with ribald jest and laughter,
36 fools in their senselessness, they will falsely attribute to them
37 all the dastardly and evil deeds that they shall do.
38 For slow of faith is all the race of men. But when
39 the assizes of the world and of mortals shall come, which God himself
40 shall hold when he judges ungodly and godly alike:
41 then shall he send the ungodly in the fire beneath the murky gloom,
42 and then shall they know what grievous impiety they have committed.
43 But the godly shall remain upon the fruitful field,
44 when God has given them breath and life and grace.
45 But all these things are to be accomplished in the tenth generation.
46 Now I will tell all that is to come to pass from the first generation.
47 First of all, the Assyrians shall rule over all mankind,
48 holding the world for six generations under their sway,
49 from the time when, since the heavenly God was wroth with
50 the cities themselves and all mankind,
51 the sea covered the earth with the outbreak of the flood.
52 Them shall the Medes subdue and vaunt themselves on their throne,
53 yet their generations shall be but two. In their time shall be these mighty works.
54 Darkling night shall fall at the middle hour of day:
55 the stars and the moon’s disk shall fail from heaven.
56 And the earth shaken by the upheaval of a mighty earthquake
57 shall cast down headlong many cities and works of men.
58 And then islands shall peep forth from the depths of the sea.
59 But when great Euphrates shall run in torrents of blood,
60 then betwixt Medes and Persians the dread din of battle
61 shall arise in war. And the Medes, overthrown by the Persians’ spears,
62 shall flee over the broad waters of the Tigris.
63 And the Persians’ might shall be supreme in all the world;
64 yet they shall have but one generation of prosperous kingship.
65 Then there shall be all those evil works which men pray to be spared,
66 wars and murders, schisms and exiles,
67 the headlong crash of towers and the overthrow of cities,
68 when proud Hellas shall sail to the broad Hellespont,
69 bringing grievous doom to Phrygians and to Asia.
70 Then into Egypt the many-furrowed land of wheat,
71 famine and failure of crops shall stalk for twenty circling years,
72 when the Nile, the cornblade’s nurse,
73 shall hide its black water somewhere else beneath the earth.
74 There shall come from Asia a king brandishing a mighty sword
75 with ships innumerable; and over the watery paths of the deep
76 he shall journey on foot, and shall cut a path for his ships through a lofty mountain peak.
77 Yet craven Asia shall receive him back a fugitive from war.
78 Wretched Sicily shall be burned up from end to end
79 by a stream of mighty fire when Etna’s flame belches forth.
80 And Croton’s great city shall fall into the deep stream.
81 Hellas shall have strife: and men distraught with rage one against another
82 shall cast down headlong many cities and shall slay many
83 in battle: and the strife shall be of doubtful issue.
84 But when the race of mortals comes to the tenth generation,
85 then the Persians shall experience the yoke of slavery and terror.
86 But when the Macedonians boast of the sceptre,
87 then Thebes too in later days shall experience capture.
88 And Carians shall occupy Tyre and the Tyrians shall perish;
89 and sand shall envelop the whole of Samos under sandhills,
90 and Delos shall appear no more, but all Delos shall disappear.
91 And Babylon mighty to behold but puny in battle
92 shall stand buoyed up by ineffective hopes.
93 Macedonians shall occupy Bactra; and the fugitives from Bactra
94 and Susa shall all flee to the land of Greece.
95 Posterity shall know a time when silvery eddying Pyramus
96 pushing forward its strand shall come to the holy island.
97 And thou, Baris, shalt fall and Cyzicus too when the earth
98 quivers with earthquakes and cities perish.
99 And to the Rhodians there shall come a last but crowning disaster.
100 Nor shall the might of Macedonia last. But from the west
101 a great Italian war shall blossom forth, whereby the world
102 shall serve as slaves under the yoke of the sons of Italy.
103 And thou, ill-starred Corinth, shalt one day look on thy capture.
104 Carthage, thy tower, too, shall bend the knee to earth.
105 Miserable Laodicea, thee too an earthquake shall one day raze
106 in precipitate ruin, but thou shalt stand built up again as a city.
107 O fair Lycian Myra, thy quivering earth shall no longer
108 hold thee firm but falling down headlong on the earth,
109 thou shalt be fain to flee as an exile to another land,
110 †what time over the impieties of Patara the Lord
111 shall spread the dark sea wave with thunderings and earthquakes†.
112 For thee, too, Armenia, the stress of slavery is in store.
113 To Solyma too the evil blast of war shall come
114 from Italy, and shall lay in ruins God’s great temple.
115 whenever, confident in their folly, they shall cast godliness to the winds
116 and commit hateful murders before the temple.
117 And then from Italy a great king, like a fugitive slave,
118 shall flee unseen, unheard of, over the passage of the Euphrates;
119 when he shall dare even the hateful pollution of a mother’s murder,
120 and many other things beside, venturing so far with wicked hand.
121 And many for the throne of Rome shall dye the ground with their blood,
122 when he has run away beyond the Parthian land.
123 And a Roman leader shall come to Syria, who shall burn down Solyma’s temple with fire,
124 and therewith slay many men,
125 and shall waste the great land of the Jews with its broad way.
126 And then an earthquake shall destroy Salamis and Paphos together,
127 when the dark stormy water shall swamp Cyprus.
128 But when a firebrand starting from a deep cavern in the land of Italy
129 shall reach the broad heaven,
130 and burn many a city and consume its men,
131 and clouds of sooty ashes beset the great heaven,
132 and grains fall from the sky like red earth,
133 then recognize the wrath of the God of heaven,
134 because they shall destroy the guiltless race of godly men.
135 And to the west shall come the strife of gathering war,
136 and the exile from Rome, brandishing a mighty sword,
137 crossing the Euphrates with many myriads.
138 Ill-starred Antioch, they shall call thee no longer a city,
139 when in thy folly thou fallest under Italian spears.
140 And Cyrrhus shall be consumed by pestilence and dreadful strife.
141 Woe to thee, wretched Cyprus, the level sea-wave
142 shall envelop thee tossed up and down with wintry blasts.
143 There shall come to Asia great wealth which Rome once
144 stole for herself and stored in her rich treasure-house.
145 And twofold and more shall she restore
146 to Asia, and then there shall be a surfeit of war.
147 The cities of the Carians by the waters of the Maeander,
148 with all their battlements exceeding fair, shall be destroyed by pinching
149 famine, when Maeander buries her black water.
150 But when faith in godliness shall perish from men,
151 and justice is hidden away in the world,
152 †and men, becoming renegades† and living on unholy enterprises,
153 commit deeds of shame and acts dastardly and evil,
154 and no man takes account of the godly, but even
155 in their senselessness, fond fools, destroy them all,
156 rejoicing in acts of violence and turning their hands to deeds of bloodshed;
157 then be sure that God is no more of tender mercy,
158 but gnashing His teeth in wrath and destroying at once
159 the whole race of men by means of a mighty conflagration.
160 O ill-starred mortals, let not these things be, and
161 drive not the great God to divers deeds of wrath; but have done with
162 swords and moanings and killing of men, and deeds of violence,
163 and wash your whole bodies in ever-running rivers,
164 and, stretching your hands to heaven, seek forgiveness for your former deeds,
165 and with praises ask pardon for your bitter ungodliness.
166 God will grant repentance
167 and will not slay: He will stay his wrath once more if with one accord
168 ye practise precious godliness in your hearts.
169 But if with evil mind ye obey me not, but delighting in ungodliness
170 ye receive all these words with ill-affected ears,
171 then fire shall come upon the whole world, and a mighty sign
172 with sword and trumpet at the rising of the sun.
173 The whole world shall hear a rumbling and a mighty roar.
174 And he shall burn the whole earth, and consume the whole race of men,
175 and all the cities and rivers and the sea.
176 He shall burn everything out, and there shall be sooty dust.
177 But when at last everything shall have been reduced to dust and ashes
178 and God shall quench the giant fire, even as he kindled it,
179 then God Himself shall fashion again the bones and ashes of men,
180 and shall raise up mortals once more as they were before.
181 And then the judgement shall come wherein God himself shall give sentence,
182 judging the world again. And all who have sinned with deeds of impiety
183 a heap of earth shall cover again,
184 and murky Tartarus and the black recesses of hell.
185 But all who are godly shall live again on earth
186 when God gives breath and life and grace to them,
187 the godly. And then all shall behold themselves,†
188 beholding the lovely and pleasant sunlight.
189 Thrice blest the man who lives until that time.