Century 2

II.1

[after Froissart’s Chroniques, describing John of Gaunt’s rampage across France during 1373]

Towards Aquitaine by British attacks
on their own account great incursions.
Rains, frosts shall make the land hostile.
Through the salt-sea port [La Rochelle] he [they] shall carry out mighty invasions.

II.2

[after the Mirabilis Liber of 1522/3, referring to dissensions within Islam]

The blue head shall inflict upon the white head
as much evil as France has done them good:
dead on the sail-yard, the lord hanged from the branch,
when the King shall say how many should be seized by his own people.

II.3

[after Julius Obsequens’s On Omens for 44 BC]

Because of the sun’s heat upon the sea
of the Black Sea the fishes [shall be] half cooked:
the inhabitants shall cut them up [for food]
when Rhodes and Genoa shall run out of provisions.

II.4

[after the Mirabilis Liber of 1522/3]

All the way from Monaco to near Sicily
the whole coast shall remain desolated:
there shall be no suburb, city or town
that has not been pillaged and robbed by the Barbarians.

II.5

[after the release from prison in 1552 of the Baron de la Garde, Admiral of the Eastern Sea]

He who was shut up in fish [prison] by sword and letter
shall come forth, who shall then make war.
He shall have his well-rowed fleet at sea,
appearing near the Italian shore.

II.6

[after the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18:16 to 19:29)]

Near the gates and within two cities
there shall be two scourges the like of which [was] never seen;
famine within, plague, people driven out at sword-point,
crying for help on great God immortal.

II.7

[after Livy’s History of Rome (xli.21)]

Among many transported to the isles,
one shall be born with two teeth in his mouth:
they shall die of famine, the trees stripped bare.
For them a new King devises a new edict.

II.8

[after contemporary efforts at Catholic reform]

[Of] temples consecrated in the original Roman manner
they shall reject the crude bases,
accepting their original human laws,
[and] expelling, though not entirely, the cults of the saints.

II.9

[after the activities of John Calvin, seen as the Antichrist and assimilated to the predictions of the Mirabilis Liber of 1522/3]

Nine years the sterile one shall hold the realm in peace,
then he shall fall into such bloodthirstiness:
through him a great people without faith and law shall die;
killed by one far more good-natured.

II.10

[after contemporary omens assimilated to the predictions of the Mirabilis Liber of 1522/3]

Before long everything shall be set in order.
We can look forward to a very sinister century.
The state of whores and monks exchanged:
they shall find few prepared to retain their proper rank.

II.11

[possibly after Suetonius’s The Twelve Caesars, ii.3, casting doubt on the origins of the Emperor Augustus]

The numbskull’s son and heir shall attain,
promoted so much, to the realm of the mighty:
his harsh glory everyone shall fear,
but his children [shall be] thrown out of the kingdom.

II.12

[after the Mirabilis Liber of 1522/3]

Eyes closed, opened [only] to antique fantasy,
the habit of the monks shall be put at naught:
the great monarch shall chastise their frenzy,
sacking the treasure of the temples before them [their eyes] .

II.13

[after the Mirabilis Liber of 1522/3]

The soulless corpse shall no longer be tortured:
[On the] day of death it shall be born [again]:
The divine spirit shall make the soul blissful,
seeing the Word in its eternity.

II.14

[after the arrival of Pope Clement VII and Catarina de’ Medici at Marseille in 1533]

At the Fort St-Jean, the guard shall keep its eyes skinned:
they shall make out from afar her serene Highness.
She and her retinue shall enter the port.
War banished, power sovereign.

II.15

[after the death by drowning of the young King Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia in 1526 following the battle of Mohacs]

Shortly before the monarch is killed,
[Fleeing to] Castor and Pollux [the twin cities of Buda and Pest] by ship, a comet:
State funds exhausted by land and sea.
Pisa, Asti, Ferrara, Turin [shall be] forbidden territory.

II.16

[after the Annales Cassini for 1194, recording the conquest of formerly Muslim Sicily by the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI]

Naples, Palermo, Sicily, Syracuse,
new tyrants [rulers], celestial lightning-fires [fireworks in the sky].
Many from London [a seaborne force] [from] Ghent, Brussels and Susa
shall put on great slaughter [games], a triumph, festivities.

II.17

[in part after Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, describing the flight of the Consul Marius]

To the field of the temple of the vestal virgin
not far from Elne and the Pyrenees mountains
the great one [having been] taken, he is hidden in the sack.
By the north wind rivers and cultivated vines frozen.

II.18

[after Julius Obsequens’s On Omens for 186 BC]

New, sudden, violent rain
shall suddenly halt two armies:
stones from the sky, fires, shall make the sea stony.
The sudden death of seven by land and sea.

II.19

[after the Mirabilis Liber of 1522/3]

Newcomers, a place built without defence,
shall occupy lands until then uninhabitable:
meadows, houses, fields, towns they shall take at will.
Famine, plague, war, [then] extensive land to plough.

II.20

[after a procession of condemned heretics on their way to the stake on 21 January 1535, watched by François I and his sons]

‘Brothers’ and ‘sisters’ captured in various places
shall find themselves passing before the Monarch:
watching them shall be his attentive sons,
unhappy to see the marks on chin, forehead and nose.

II.21

[after contemporary reports of Mediterranean piracy]

The ambassador sent by biremes,
[shall be] repelled halfway by unknown ones:
to support him four triremes shall come.
[They shall be] bound in Euboea with ropes and chains.

II.22

[after an unidentified episode from ancient Greek history]

The Boeotian force shall leave Sparta,
assembling near the submerged isle:
the fleet shall furl its sails,
having called in aid the supreme voice of the world’s navel [the Delphic Oracle].

II.23

[after Suetonius’s The Twelve Caesars (I.25, 81, 82), describing the omens attending the assassination of Julius Caesar]

[The] palace birds chased out by one bird
very soon afterwards the prince shall be warned:
although the enemy is repelled beyond the river,
outside [he shall be] seized, the arrow borne by a bird.

II.24

[after Poggius’s De Varietate Fortunae of around 1430, contrasting the fates of King Sigismund of Hungary and his opponent, the Sultan Bayezid I (also known as Bajazet), after the battle of Nicopolis on the banks of the Danube in 1396]

[Like] wild beasts famished [they] shall cross the rivers:
The major battle shall be by the Hister [Danube].
He shall cause the great one to be dragged in an iron cage,
while the German shall be surveying the infant Rhine.

II.25

[source unidentified]

The foreign guard [girl] shall betray the fortress,
[in the] hope and dream of a higher marriage:
The guard having been deceived, the fort is captured in the fray.
[On] Loire, Saône, Rhône, Garonne, deadly outrage.

II.26

[source unidentified]

Because of the favour that the city shall show
to the lord who shall soon lose the battle,
having fled the ranks, by Po and Ticino he shall shed
blood: explosions, deaths, drowned, hacked apart.

II.27

[after a contemporary event affecting a religious procession]

The Holy Monstrance shall be struck [by lightning] from the sky,
such that it cannot proceed any further:
The secret of the revealer hushed up,
so that they may march over it and forwards.

II.28

[possibly after chapter 33 of part two of Lichtenbeger’s Pronosticatio in the Mirabilis Liber of 1522/3]

The last-but-one of those called Prophet
shall take Diana [Monday] for his day of rest:
He shall wander far with his frenzied mind,
and deliver a great people from tribute.

II.29

[after the campaigns of Attila the Hun, probably as described in Jordanis’s De Reb. Geticis (or De Origine Actibusque Getarum), published in Latin by Herwagen of Basel in 1531]

The Easterner shall come forth from his seat,
to cross the Apennine mountains and see Gaul:
he shall press on through the region’s waters and snow[s]
and shall strike everyone with his rod.

II.30

[after the Mirabilis Liber of 1522/3]

One who the infernal gods of Hannibal
shall cause to be reborn, [shall become] the terror of mankind:
never more horrors nor worse reports
than ever occurred shall come to the Romans through Babel.

II.31

[possibly after the Mirabilis Liber of 1522/3, together with contemporary phenomena]

In Campania and Capua things shall be such
that only fields covered by waters shall be seen.
Before and after it shall rain for a long time:
there shall be nothing green to be seen except the trees.

II.32

[after various contemporary omen-reports, later described and illustrated by Lycosthenes (1557) – see woodcut below]

Milk, blood, frogs shall flatten the corn in Dalmatia.
Battle once given, plague near Trebula Balliensis [Treglia]:
great shall be the cry throughout Slavonia.
Then a monster shall be born near or within Ravenna.

II.33

[source unidentified]

Beside the torrent that descends from Verona
where it winds its way into the Po,
a great watery disaster, and no less on the Garonne,
when those of Genoa shall march against their country.

II.34

[possibly after the murder by Cesare Borgia of the Duke of Gandia in 1497]

The senseless anger of the furious combat
shall cause brothers’ swords to flash at table.
They shall be parted, one dead, one wounded – and troubled:
the proud duel shall do harm in France.

II.35

[after the accidental burning alive of traders staying at the Hôtel de la Tête d’Argent at Lyon during the November fair of 1500]

In two lodgings by night fire shall take hold,
many within suffocated and roasted:
next to two rivers it shall happen for sure.
Sun in Sagittarius and Capricorn: all shall be done to death.

II.36

[after the downfall of the tyrant Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan, in 1500, after he had intercepted a letter to Charles VIII of France from the religious firebrand Savonarola]

The letters of the great Prophet shall be seized:
they shall come into the hands of the tyrant:
his enterprises shall be to deceive his king,
but his graft shall very soon trouble him.

II.37

[source unidentified]

Of that great number who shall be sent
to relieve those besieged in the fort,
plague and famine shall devour them all,
apart from seventy who shall be felled.

II.38

[after the brief reconciliation between King François I and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V during 1538-9]

Of condemned there shall be a great number made
when the monarchs shall be reconciled,
But for one of them it shall be so inconvenient
that they shall hardly be allied [for long].

II.39

[after the collapse of the Florentine Republic in 1494]

One year before the Italian conflict,
Germans, Gauls, Spaniards [shall be in it] for fortune [gain]:
The schoolhouse [whorehouse] that’s the state shall fall,
where, apart from a few, they shall be choked to death.

II.40

[after the largely naval war of 1499 to 1503 between Venice and the Ottoman Turks]

Shortly afterwards, not [after] a very long interval at all,
by sea and land a great tumult shall be raised.
Much greater shall the naval battle be:
violent explosions that shall intensify the attack.

II.41

[after Julius Obsequens’s On Omens for the death of Julius Caesar in 44 BC]

The great star shall burn for seven days:
cloud shall make two [extra] suns appear.
The great mastiff all night shall howl
when the great Pontifex shall change country.

II.42

[after Francesco Matarazzo’s Chronicles of the City of Perugia 1492 - 1503, describing the fierce power struggle in 1495 between the Oddi and the reigning Baglioni]

Cock, dogs and cats shall be satiated with blood
once they have found the tyrant dead from the wound –
and in the bed of another legs and arms broken –
who was not afraid to die a cruel death.

II.43

[after Julius Obsequens’s account of the omens accompanying the assassination of Julius Caesar and the assumption of power by Octavian, Mark Antony and Lepidus]

During the appearance of the bearded star [comet]
the three great princes shall be made enemies:
[lightning-]strikes from the sky, earthly peace on edge,
Po, Tiber flooding, serpent washed up on the shore.

II.44

[source unidentified]

The Eagle, driven back around the tents,
shall be chased away by other birds from the locality
when the noise of cymbals, trumpets and bells
shall restore the senses of the senseless lady.

II.45

[after contemporary reports of androgynous births, not unlike those recorded by Julius Obsequens]

Too much the sky weeps [it rains]. The Androgyne [once] begotten,
near that area human blood [shall be] shed.
By [its] overdue death a great people re-created:
sooner or later comes the awaited relief.

II.46

[in part after Virgil’s Eclogues, iv.4-7]

After great human trouble, a greater prepares itself:
the Great Mover renews the ages.
Rain, blood, milk, famine, sword and plague:
in the sky fire seen, a long shooting star.

II.47

[source unidentified]

The enemy lord, long in mourning, dies of poison,
the sovereigns subjugated by infinite [tiny] numbers.
It shall rain stones, people hidden under the fleece:
at the point of death they shall be falsely accused.

II.48

[after the anti-Protestant crusade across the Lubéron of 1545]

What a great force shall pass the mountains!
Saturn in Sagittarius, Mars retrograde in Pisces,
their venomous creed under cover of salmon [Psalms],
their leader hanged with parcel-cord.

II.49

[after the flight of the Knights of St John to Malta in 1530]

The councillors of the first league –
the conquerors having been diverted to Malta,
abandoning Rhodes, Byzantium as their territory –
shall lack a homeland as they flee from their pursuers.

II.50

[source unidentified]

When those of Hainaut, of Ghent and of Brussels
shall see the siege laid before Langres,
behind their flanks there shall be cruel wars.
The ancient wound [plague] shall be worse than [for the] enemies.

II.51

[after the celebrated ‘Affair of the Templars’ of 1307-14 in which 138 (i.e. six times 23) French Templars were accused and in some cases tortured and burnt alive]

No blood of the just shall be spilt in London,
[but] six times twenty-three shall be singed by anathemas.
The ancient lady shall fall from a high place:
of the same sect shall many be killed.

II.52

[after the Mirabilis Liber of 1522/3 and possibly reports of the great Constantinople earthquake of 1509]

During several nights the earth shall tremble:
in the spring two shocks shall follow.
Corinth, Ephesus shall be overwhelmed by two seas:
war [shall be] stirred up by two [leaders] valiant in combat.

II.53

[after the plague epidemic that ravaged Marseille and the rest of Provence in 1545]

The great plague of the maritime city
shall not cease until the death shall be avenged
of the just blood, condemned for their pains without committing a crime,
[and until] the great lady [shall be] outraged by the pretence.

II.54

[possibly after the Mirabilis Liber of 1522/3, plus Julius Obsequens’s On Omens for 163 BC]

Through alien folk, and far from the Romans,
their great city by the water [Rome] deeply troubled:
a girl without hands: his authority too much opposed,
the leader captured, the lock having not been properly adjusted.

II.55

[source unidentified]

In the conflict the lord who was worth little
at his end shall do a wonderful thing:
while Adria [Venice] shall see what is lacking in him,
during the banquet the proud one stabbed.

II.56

[source unidentified]

What neither plague nor sword managed to put a stop to,
dead in the well, thunderstruck from aloft the sky.
The abbot shall die when he shall see ruined
the shipwrecked ones trying to anchor on the reef.

II.57

[after the sack of Rome by the forces of Charles V in 1527, following the collapse of the wall between the Vatican and the Castel Sant’ Angelo]

Before the conflict the great wall shall fall,
the lord [done] to death, death too sudden and lamented:
[one shall be] born imperfect, the greater part shall be inundated.
By the river the land stained with blood.

II.58

[source unidentified]

With neither foot nor hand, but with sharp and strong tooth,
with a boss on the fort [forehead], born of the pig and woolly sheep [in Milan],
near the gate treacherously he proceeds.
The moon shines, the little lord [is] abducted.

II.59

[after the contemporary exploits of the Baron de la Garde, Admiral of the Eastern Mediterranean and one of Nostradamus’s cronies]

[The] Gallic fleet with the support of the great Garde:
by the great Admiral and his trident soldiers
Provence laid waste to sustain his great horde.
More war at Narbonne, involving javelins and darts.

II.60

[after the breaking of the Ottomans’ agreement with France in 1554, and the apparently half-caste Baron de la Garde’s consequent impatience, assimilated to a prophecy by the Sibylline Oracle]

The African pact [bad faith] in the East broken,
Ganges, Jordan, and Rhone, Loire, and Tagus shall change:
once the mulatto shall have had enough,
fleet scattered, blood and floating bodies.

II.61

[source unidentified]

Bravo! you of the Thames [you English] in Gironde and La Rochelle:
O Trojan [Royal] blood! War at Port de la Flèche.
Behind the river the ladder put to the fort:
[by] arquebuses great slaughter over the breach.

II.62

[after the daylight comet of 1532, the death of the Flemish painter Mabuse and the repulsing of the Ottoman invaders in Hungary by the forces of Charles V]

Mabus[e] then shall soon die, [and] then there shall come
of people and animals a horrible destruction.
Then suddenly vengeance shall be seen:
hundred, hand [human blood], thirst, hunger, when the comet shall pass.

II.63

[possibly after the War of Parma of 1551]

The Gauls [French] shall subjugate Ausonia [Italy] very little:
Po, Marne and Seine [the Italians and French] shall engage in slaughter at Parma.
He who shall prepare the great defence against them,
through the least on the wall, that lord shall lose his life.

II.64

[Nostradamus’s expectation of the collapse of contemporary ‘heresies’ in Switzerland and southern France]

The people of Geneva shall wilt with hunger, with thirst:
any hope of immediate help shall collapse.
On the point [of balance] shall tremble the law of the Cévennes:
no fleet can put in at the great port.

II.65

[after the Imperial campaign under Charles de Bourbon that culminated in the sack of Rome in 1527]

The park inclined [The Crouching Leopard] shall create great calamity
throughout Italy and in the area of Milan:
the ship [Church] aflame, plague and captivity.
Mercury in Sagittarius, Saturn shall reap.

II.66

[source unidentified]

Despite great dangers the captive having escaped,
in a short time the lord’s fortune [shall be] changed [for the worse].
In the palace the populace is trapped.
By [way of a] good omen the city is besieged.

II.67

[possibly after an account of political exile by Livy]

The blond one shall come to blows with the one with a furrowed nose
by duel, and shall chase him out:
he shall have the exiles brought back,
[while] committing the strongest to places overseas.

II.68

[possibly anticipating the restoration of the Stuarts in Scotland]

Of the North the efforts shall be great:
on the Ocean the gate shall be opened.
The kingdom on the isle shall be restored:
London shall quake when the sail is noticed.

II.69

[after the struggles of François I and his son Henri II with the Holy Roman Empire]

The Gallic King through the Celtic right,
seeing the discord of the great Monarchy,
over the three parts [of Gaul] shall make his sceptre flourish,
against the cope of the great [Roman] Hierarchy.

II.70

[after the Mirabilis Liber of 1522/3 and Julius Obsequens’s On Omens]

The dart [The comet] shall sprawl across the sky.
Deaths while speaking: great execution.
The stone in [Lightning strikes] the tree, the proud nation surrendered,
brutal human monster, purification and expiation.

II.71

[source unidentified]

The exiles shall come to Sicily
to deliver from hunger the foreign nation.
At daybreak the Celts shall fail it.
Life remains: the King sees reason.

II.72

[after the disastrous Battle of Pavia of 1525, compared with Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon]

The Celtic army harassed in Italy,
on all sides conflict and great loss:
Romans fled, O Gaul repulsed!
By the Ticino, the battle of the Rubicon uncertain.

II.73

[after the struggles of Henri II with the Holy Roman Empire, plus Julius Obsequens’s On Omens for 95 BC]

The shore of Lake Garda shall be prisoner to Lake Fucino
from the Lake of Geneva to the port of L’Orguion:
[a child] born with three arms presages the image of a war
[waged by] three crowns on the great Endymion [moon-lover (Henri II)].

II.74

[after the Mirabilis Liber of 1522/3]

From Sens, from Autun they shall come as far as the Rhone
to pass beyond towards the Pyrenees mountains.
The people shall emerge from the March of Ancona:
by land and sea they shall follow him in long files.

II.75

[after Julius Obsequens’s On Omens for 135 and 133 BC]

The voice heard of the unaccustomed bird [the newly-invented office of sénéchal]
on the stern law-book and the winding stair [of the royal château at Blois]:
so high shall the [price of a] bushel of wheat rise,
that men shall become cannibals.

II.76

[after an unknown contemporary omen]

Lightning in Burgundy shall be a portentous event,
that could never have been brought about artificially:
the sacristan of their senate, made lame,
shall make the affair known to the enemies.

II.77

[after the 13th-century Historia Albigensis by Pierre des Vaux-de-Cernay, describing the siege of Termes by Count Simon de Montfort in 1210]

Repulsed by bows, flames, pitch and by explosions:
screams, yells heard at midnight.
Within they are stationed on the broken ramparts,
the traitors having fled via underground tunnels.

II.78

[after the late arrival in 1554 of the Baron de la Garde, the allegedly half-caste Admiral of the Eastern Mediterranean, to support Strozzi against the Holy Roman Empire, and the resulting devastation of Corsica and Sardinia by Andrea Doria]

The great Admiral from the depths of the sea
of North African race and Gallic blood mixed,
The Isles bleeding because of the tardy rowing.
It shall harm him more than the badly hidden secret.

II.79

[after the Emperor Charles V’s triumphant attack on Muslim Tunis in 1535, reapplied as a prophecy to the French Henri II]

[He of] The black and frizzy beard skilfully
shall subjugate the cruel and haughty race:
The great CHYREN [Henry] shall remove from the dungeon
all those captured by the lunar banner [of the Muslims].

II.80

[source unidentified]

After the fight, through the eloquence of the loser,
for a short time a slight respite is contrived,
[but] the lords are not allowed any deliverance:
the enemies are sent back to work.

II.81

[after Julius Obsequens’s On Omens, reapplied to the disaster at Milan of 1521]

Through fire from the sky the city all but incinerated:
Aquarius threatens a new Deucalion [flood].
Sardinia [shall be] harassed by the North African galley,
after her Phaethon [the Sun] shall leave Libra.

II.82

[after an unidentified contemporary omen]

Through hunger the prey shall take the wolf prisoner,
the assailant then in extreme distress.
The newborn child having its behind in front,
the lord does not escape in the heart of the throng.

II.83

[source unidentified]

The great commerce of mighty Lyon changed [for the worse],
the greater part returns to primitive ruin[s],
prey to the troops, the vines plundered.
Through the Jura mountains and Swabia, drizzle.

II.84

[possibly after the Mirabilis Liber of 1522/3]

Between Campania, Siena, Florence, Tuscany,
For six months and nine days it shall rain not a drop:
The foreign tongue in the land of Dalmatia,
it shall overrun, laying waste the whole land.

II.85

[in part after Julius Obsequens’s On Omens, plus Virgil’s Aeneid, viii.524-9]

The old full beard under the severe edict
at Lyon beats the Celtic Eagle.
The minor lord perseveres too far:
the sound of arms in the sky: the Ligurian sea red.

II.86

[source unidentified]

A fleet shipwrecked near [in] the Adriatic Sea:
The land quaking, it is cast ashore.
Egypt trembles at the rise of Islam.
The Herald is commissioned to cry surrender.

II.87

[possibly after the accession of the Burgundian Charles V to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire in 1520]

Afterwards shall come from the furthermost lands
a German Prince upon the gilded throne:
Servitude and waters [slavery] encountered.
The lady a vassal, her time no longer adored.

II.88

[source unidentified]

The lord’s progress having become ruinous,
the seventh name shall be that of the fifth.
Greater by a third, the warlike foreigner
shall spare neither Paris nor Aix with his battering ram.

II.89

[source unidentified]

From the yoke shall be released the two grand masters:
their great power shall see itself increased.
The new[ly re-leased] land shall be in his high hall
accounted for to the bloody one.

II.90

[after the celebrated Battle of Mohács of 1526, when the twin cities of Buda and Pest were captured by the Ottomans]

Through life and death the kingdom of Hungary changed [for the worse]:
the [new] dispensation shall be harsher than servitude.
Their great city full of yells and screams,
Castor and Pollux [the twins] foes in the lists.

II.91

[after Julius Obsequens’s On Omens for 91 BC]

As the sun rises a great fire shall be seen,
the noise and light extending towards the north:
within the circle deathly screams shall be heard,
by sword, fire, famine, death awaiting them.

II.92

[after Julius Obsequens’s On Omens for 91 BC]

Fire the colour of gold seen [falling] from the sky to earth:
the firstborn struck from on high, a miraculous thing done.
Great human murder: the nephew of the lord captured:
deaths in the course of [public] spectacles, the haughty one escaped.

II.93

[after the sack of Rome in 1527]

Very close to the Tiber presses [the goddess of] death
Shortly before a great flood.
The captain of the ship [of St Peter] captured, placed in the bilge:
Castle, palace in conflagration.

II.94

[after the Mirabilis Liber of 1522/3, with the imagery presumably based on the Latin Epigrams of Ulrich von Hutten (1488-1523)]

Great Po shall receive great evil through the Gauls,
vain terror for the maritime Lion [Venice]:
a people numberless shall cross the sea,
a quarter of a million not escaping.

II.95

[after the Mirabilis Liber of 1522/3]

The inhabited places shall be uninhabitable:
there shall be great disputes over fields,
kingdoms given over to cautious bunglers.
Then for brother-nobles death and dissension.

II.96

[after Julius Obsequens’s On Omens for 167, 137, 106, 100, 94, 92, 44 and/or 17 BC]

A burning torch shall be seen in the evening sky
near the end and source of the Rhône.
Famine, sword: late the relief provided.
Persia returns to invade Macedonia.

II.97

[after the coronation of Pope Clement V at Lyon in 1305]

Roman Pontiff, beware of approaching
the city that waters two rivers!
Your blood you shall cough up near there,
you and yours, when the rose shall bloom.

II.98

[after Livy’s History of Rome (xxi.63) for 217 BC]

The one whose face is splattered with the blood
of the next victim sacrificed –
Jupiter in Leo, an omen by way of a Presage –
shall be sent to be put to death then for the betrothed.

II.99

[in part after Livy’s History of Rome (i.18), describing the inauguration of the semi-legendary King Numa in around 710 BC]

The Roman territory that the omen interpreted
shall be vexed by the Gallic people all too much:
but the Celtic nation shall fear the hour
[when] the fleet shall have been pushed too far by the north wind.

II.100

[after the Mirabilis Liber of 1522/3]

Within the isles so horrible a tumult!
Nothing shall be heard but a clash of war.
So mighty shall be the attack of the predators
that everyone shall join in the [a] great league.

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