The Sortes Vergilianae (Virgilian Lots) was a practice used by Ancient Romans (and others after Roman times such as in the Medieval era and during the Renaissance) to seek advice or predictions of the future.
The practice involved opening a book of Virgil's works (usually the Aeneid) at random and reading the first passage that caught one's eye. The passage would then be interpreted as an omen/prophecy.
This website allows you to perform the Sortes Vergilianae without needing to own a copy of Virgil's works. Simply click the button to get a random line from Vergil's Aeneid, translated for you!
Instead of a horoscope, let Virgil tell you your poetic prophecy from 2,050 years in the past.
The fun part is, whatever line you get is up to your own interpretation as to what the prophecy means.
The Aeneid is an epic poem written by Virgil between 30 and 19 BC that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan refugee who travelled to Italy after the Trojan war, destined to become the ancestor of the Romans.
Because is an epic, your prophetic line may contain some exciting battle action! It's up to you whether that's a good or bad thing.
I learned React and Next.js to make this website. I used Python scripts to clean and format the Aeneid English and Latin texts, and I used Tailwind CSS to style the website.
note: There is a more detailed log of my work in "log.md" on the Github repo.
note2: I had a lot of fun playing around with the CSS, specifically making little things happen when you hover, select, or are pressing down on certain elements.
note3: I used a color scheme of "slate-500" and "lightseagreen" because why not
note4: There are four hyperlinks hidden in the text on this page, try to find them!