The Sibylline Oracles 4

1PEOPLE of boastful Asia and of Europe,

2Hear how much, all too true, I am about,

3Through a month many-toned, from my great hall

4To prophesy; no oracle am I

5Of lying Phœbus whom vain men called god,

6And further falsified by calling seer;

7But of the mighty God, whom hands of men

8Formed not like speechless idols carved of stone.

9For he has not for his abode a stone

10Most dumb and toothless to a temple drawn,

11Of immortals a dishonor very sore;

12For he may not be seen from earth nor measured

13By mortal eyes, nor formed by mortal hand;

14He, looking down at once on all, is seen

15Himself by no one; his are murky night,

16And day, and sun, and stars, and moon, and seas

17With fish, and land, and rivers, and the month

18Of springs perennial, creatures meant for life,

19And rains at once producing fruit of field

20And tree and vine and oil. This God a whip

21Struck through my heart within to make me tell

22Truly to men what things have now befallen

23And how much shall befall them yet again

24From the first generation to the eleventh;

25For he himself by bringing them to pass

26Will prove all things. But do thou in all things,

27O people, to the Sibyl give all ear,

28Who pours from hallowed mouth a truthful voice.

29Blessed of men shall they be on the earth

30As many as shall love the mighty God,

31Offering him praise before they drink and eat;

32Trusting in piety. When they behold

33Temples and altars, figures of dumb stones,

34[Stone images and statues made with hands]

35Polluted with the blood of living things

36And sacrifices of four-footed beasts,

37They will reject them all; and they will look

38To the great glory of one God and not

39Commit presumptuous murder nor dispose

40Of stolen gain, which things most horrid are;

41Nor shameful longing for another's bed

42Have they, nor vile and hateful lust of males.

43Their manner, piety, and character

44Shall other men, that love a shameless life,

45Not ever imitate; but, mocking them

46With jest and joke like babes in senselessness,

47They'll falsely charge to them as many deeds

48Blameful and wicked as they do themselves.

49For slow is the whole race of human kind

50To believe. But when judgment of the world

51And mortals comes which God himself shall bring

52Judging at once the impious and the pious,

53Then indeed shall he send the ungodly back

54To lower darkness [and then they shall know

55How much impiety they wrought]; but the pious

56Shall still remain upon the fruitful land,

57God giving to them breath and life and grace.

58But these things all in the tenth generation

59Shall come to pass; and now what things shall be

60From the first generation, those I'll tell.

61First over all mortal shall Assyrians rule,

62And for six generations hold the power

63Of the world, from the time the God of heaven

64Being wroth against the cities and all men

65Sea with a bursting deluge covered earth.

66Them shall the Medes o'erpower, but on the throne

67For two generations only shall exult;

68In which times those events shall come to pass:

69Dark night shall come at the mid hour of day

70And from the heaven the stars and circling moon

71Shall disappear; and earth in tumult shaken

72By a great earthquake shall throw many cities

73And works of men headlong; and from the deep

74They shall peer out the islands of the Sea.

75But when the great Euphrates shall with blood

76Be surging, then shall there be also set

77Between the Medes and Persians dreadful strife

78In battle; and the, Medes shall fall and fly

79'Neath Persian spears beyond the mighty water

80Of Tigris. And the Persian power shall be

81Greatest in all the world, and they shall have

82One generation of most prosperous rule.

83And there shall be as many evil deeds

84As men shall wish away--the din of war,

85And murders, and disputes, and banishments,

86And overthrow of towers and waste of cities,

87When Hellas very glorious shall sail

88Over broad Hellespont, and shall convey

89To Phrygia sorrow and to Asia doom.

90And unto Egypt, land of many furrows,

91Shall sorry famine come, and barrenness

92Shall during twenty circling years prevail,

93What time the Nile, corn-nourisher, shall hide

94His dark wave somewhere underneath the earth.

95And there shall come from Asia a great king

96Bearing a spear, with ships innumerable,

97And he shall walk the wet paths of the deep,

98And shall sail after he has cut the mount

99Of lofty summit; him a fugitive

100From battle fearful Asia shall receive.

101And Sicily the wretched shall a stream

102Of powerful fire set all aflame while Etna

103Her flame disgorges; and in the deep chasm

104Down shall the mighty city Croton fall.

105And strife shall be in Hellas; they shall rage

106Against each other, cast down many cities,

107And fighting make an end of many men;

108But equally balanced is the strife with both.

109But, when the race of mortal men shall come

110To the tenth generation, also then

111Upon thc Persians shall a servile yoke

112And terror be. But when the Macedonians

113Shall boast the scepter there shall be for Thebes

114An evil conquest from behind, and Carians

115Shall dwell in Tyre, and Tyrians be destroyed.

116And Babylon, great to see but small to fight,

117Shall stand with walls that were in vain hopes built.

118In Bactria Macedonians shall dwell;

119But those from Susa and from Bactria

120Shall all into the land of Hellas flee.

121It shall take place among those yet to be,

122When silver-eddying Pyramus his banks

123O'erpouring, to the sacred isle shall come.

124And Cibyra shall fall and Cyzicus,

125When, earth being shaken by earthquakes, cities fall.

126And sand shall hide all Samos under banks.

127And Delos visible no more, but things

128Of Delos shall all be invisible.

129And to Rhodes shall come evil last, but greatest.

130The Macedonian power shall not abide;

131But from the west a great Italian war

132Shall flourish, under which the world shall bear

133A servile yoke and the Italians serve.

134And thou, O wretched Corinth, thou shalt look

135Sometime upon thy conquest. And thy tower,

136O Carthage, shall press lowly on the ground.

137Wretched Laodicea, thee sometime

138Shall earthquake lay low, casting headlong down,

139But thou, a city firmly set, again

140Shalt stand. O Lycia Myra beautiful,

141Thee never shall the agitated earth

142Set fast; but falling headlong down on earth

143Shalt thou, in manner like an alien, pray

144To flee away into another land,

145When sometime the dark water of the sea

146With thunders and earthquakes shall stop the din

147Of Patara for its impieties.

148Also for thee, Armenia, there remains

149A slavish fate; and there shall also come

150To Solyma an evil blast of war

151From Italy, and God's great temple spoil.

152But when these, trusting folly, shall cast off

153Their piety and murders consummate

154Around the temple, then front Italy

155A mighty king shall like a runaway slave

156Flee over the Euphrates' stream unseen,

157(106-120.)

158Unknown, who shall some time dare loathsome guilt

159Of matricide, and many other things,

160Having confidence in his most wicked hands.

161And many for the throne with blood

162Rome's soil while he flees over Parthian land.

163And out of Syria shall come Rome's foremost man,

164Who having burned the temple of Solyma,

165And having slaughtered many of the Jews,

166Shall destruction on their great broad land.

167And then too shall an earthquake overthrow

168Both Salamis and Paphos, when dark water

169Shall dash o'er Cyprus washed by many a wave.

170But when from deep cleft of Italian land

171Fire shall come flashing forth in the broad heaven,

172And many cities burn and men destroy,

173And much black ashes shall fill the great sky,

174And small drops like red earth shall fall from heaven,

175Then know the anger of the God of heaven,

176For that they without reason shall destroy

177The nation of the pious. And then strife

178Awakened of war shall come to the West,

179Shall also come the fugitive of Rome,

180Bearing a great spear, having marched across

181(121-138.)

182Euphrates with his many myriads.

183O wretched Antioch, they shall call thee

184No more a city when around their spears

185Because of thine own follies thou shalt fall.

186And then on Scyros shall a pestilence

187And dreadful battle-din destruction bring.

188Alas, alas! O wretched Cyprus, thee

189Shall a broad wave of the sea cover, thee

190Tossed on high by the whirling stormy winds.

191And into Asia there shall come great wealth,

192Which Rome herself once, plundering, put away

193In her luxurious homes; and twice as much

194And more shall she to Asia render back,

195And then there shall be an excess of war.

196And Carian cities by Maeander's waters,

197Girded with towers and very beautiful,

198Shall by a bitter famine be destroyed,

199When the Maeander his dark water hides.

200But when piety shall perish from mankind,

201And faith and right be hidden in the world,

202. . . Fickle . . . and in unhallowed boldness

203Living shall practice wanton violence,

204And reckless evil deeds, and of the pious

205No one shall make account, but even them all

206From thoughtlessness they utterly destroy

207In childish folly, in their violence

208Exulting and in blood holding their bands;

209Then know thou that God is no longer mild,

210(139-159.)

211But gnashing with fury and destroying all

212The race of men by conflagration great.

213Ah! miserable mortals, change these things,

214Nor lead the mighty God to wrath extreme;

215Put giving up your swords and pointed knives,

216And homicides and wanton violence,

217Wash your whole body in perennial streams,

218And lifting up your hands to heaven seek pardon

219For former deeds and expiate with praise

220Bitter impiety; and God will give

221Repentance; he will not destroy; and wrath

222Will he again restrain, if in your hearts

223Ye all will practice honored piety.

224But if, ill-disposed, ye obey me not,

225But with a fondness for strange lack of sense

226Receive all these things with an evil ear,

227There shall be over all the world a fire

228And greatest omen with sword and with trump

229At sunrise; the whole world shall hear the roar

230And mighty sound. And he shall burn all earth,

231And destroy the whole race of men, and all

232The cities and the rivers and the sea;

233All things he'll burn, and it shall be black dust.

234But when now all things shall have been reduced

235To dust and ashes, and God shall have calmed

236The fire unspeakable which he lit up,

237The bones and ashes of men God himself

238Again will fashion, and he will again

239Raise mortals up, even as they were before.

240And then shall be the judgment, at which God

241Himself as judge shall judge the world again;

242And all who sinned with impious hearts, even them,

243Shall he again hide under mounds of earth

244[Dark Tartarus and Stygian Gehenna].

245But all who shall be pious shall again

246Live on the earth [and (shall inherit there)

247The great immortal God's unwasting bliss,]

248God giving spirit life and joy to them

249[The pious; and they all shall see themselves

250Beholding the sun's sweet and cheering light.

251O happy on the earth shall be that man].