Sibylline Oracles

Historical printed page 385

THE SIBYLLINE BOOKS. Βοοκ III, Lines 341-392 bend its neck. (41) Chasms there shall be and yawning gulfs : and many cities (42) shall fall with all their people: in Asia’s land Iassus, (43) Cebren, Pandonia, Colophon, Ephesus, Nicaea, (44) Antioch, Cyagra, Sinope, Smyrna, Murine, (45) Gaza rich in wealth, Hierapolis, Astypalaea, (46) and of Europe famous Tanagra, royal Meropea, (47) Antigone, Magnesia, and divine Mycenae. (48) Know then that the baleful race of Egypt is nigh its doom, (49) and then to the Magnesians the year that is past shall be better. (50) For all the wealth that Rome received from tributary Asia, (51) threefold as much shall Asia receive back again (52) from Rome, and shall repay to her her hideous violence. (53) And for all those children of Asia who served Italian homes, (54) Italians to twenty-fold shall live in bondage and penury in Asia, (55) and shall pay back their debt ten thousand-fold. (56) O Rome, pampered golden offspring of Latium ! (57) thou virgin oft intoxicated by thy many suitors in marriage, (58) as a slave-girl shalt thou be wedded without ceremony, (59) and ofttimes shall thy mistress shear thy luxuriant locks, (60) and passing sentence on thee shall cast thee from heaven to earth, (61) and shall lift thee up again from earth to heaven, (62) because men held toa bad and lawless life. (63) Samos too shall be sand, Delos shall vanish (64) and Rome become a street: and all the oracles are being fulfilled. (65) Of perishing Smyrna there shall be no account. Outlaw shall she be, (66) but with evil counsels and the villainy of her leaders. (67) But tranquil peace shall make its way to the land of Asia. (68) And Europe shall then be happy, the air salubrious, (69) year after year bracing and free from storms and free from hail, (7°) producing everything, birds and creeping creatures of the earth. (71) Thrice happy who shall live unto that time, man (72) or woman: *happy he whose life is as among country folk*. (73) For good law shall come in its fullness from the starry heaven (74) upon men, and good justice, and with it (75) the best of all gifts to men, sober concord, (76) and affection, faithfulness, friendship from strangers and fellow-citizens too. (77) And lawlessness, murmuring, envy, wrath, and folly (78) shall flee from men: penury, too, shall flee, and distress, (79) and murder, and destructive strifes, and baleful feuds, (80) and thefts by night and every evil in those days. (81) But Macedonia shall bring forth a grievous calamity for Asia, (82) and for Europe there shall shoot up a desperate woe, (83) from the race of the son of Cronos, a family of bastards and slaves. (84) This shall subdue even the fortified city of Babylon, (85) and after being called mistress of every land on which the sun looks, (86) shall perish with miserable fate, (87) keeping but a name among its far-wandering sons of a later age. (88) One day there shall come unexpectedly to Asia’s wealthy land (89) a man clad with a purple cloak upon his shoulders, (90) savage, a stranger from justice, fiery: for he hath exalted himself (91) even against the thunder,a mortal as he is. And all Asia shall have an evil yoke, (92) and 344. Cyagra. Alex.’s emendation for Tanagra (see line 346). Murine An emendation of Alex. for Mdpos. 347. The end of the line is uncertain. Meineke suggests Mycenae, Oiantheia (in Locris). 350-62. A great Roman disaster in Asia. If a specific occasion is to be found it may be the Mithradatic war of 88-84 B.C., or the defeat of Crassus at Carrhae in 53 B.C. But possibly it denotes merely the humbling of the world powers that is to precede the days of the Messiah. 356 ff. The picture suggested by Isa. xiii; Apoc. xviii. 363. Samos... sand. For the play on words Σάμος ἄμμος, Δῆλος ἄδηλος, ἹΡώμη ῥύμη, cf. iv. 92, vili. 165, 166. Also Tert. De Paillio 2, Lact. vii. 25. 366. There is apparently a gap after this: but the whole order of lines is uncertain. 372. The line is unintelligible and no satisfactory emendation has been suggested. Geffcken proposes μακάρων κεν ἔῃ φάτις ὡς ἐν ἀγραύλοις, and suspects a Christian interpolation. But the first part should probably be μάκαρ ds κεν ἔῃ. For the thought cf. Pss. Sol. xvii. 50. 376. from strangers and fellow-citizens too. ξείνων ἀπὸ κἀστῶν, a conjecture for ξείνων ἀπὸ καὐτῶν. 381-7. Disaster to Asia and Europe arising from Macedonia: perhaps from the Persian Sibyl. 383. Alexander gave himself out to be the son of Juppiter Ammon after his visit to the shrine of that God in 332 B.C. The translation follows an emendation of Castalio. MSS. have νόθον δοῦλόν re, 384. Babylon, captured in 331 B.C. 388-400. The reference is much disputed. The view adopted here is, in the main, that of Hilgenfeld, γα, Afo/.., 68 ff. The unknown one (388) is Antiochus Epiphanes; the race which he destroys (394) is his brother Seleucus Philopator’s infant son. But Demetrius, the elder son of Seleucus, had the sons of Antiochus put to death (395). A certain Alexander Balas, however, came forward as the second son of Antiochus, and in 150 B.c. Demetrius I fell in battle against him (398). Alexander Balas was defeated by Ptolemy Philometor in 145, and shortly afterwards assassinated. Demetrius II then reigned alone, but a usurper, Tryphon, seized the throne (400), at first in the name of Antiochus, a young son of Alexander Balas. He, however, died, or was murdered, in 142, and Tryphon then became sole king. 388. unexpectedly to Asia’s wealthy land, or ‘unexpectedly from Asia to the wealthy land’. All MSS. have ἐξ, but ἐς seems required. 391. for he hath exalted himself even against the thunder, The rendering rests on a conjecture. MSS. have ‘for the thunder raised him up before, a man’, 11082 385 crc