The Lusiad; Or, The Discovery of India, an Epic Poem
mind was so great that he fell from his horse, and one of his guards
having caught him in his arms, conveyed him to his litter, where,
putting his finger on his lips to enjoin them silence, he immediately
expired. Hamet Taba stood by the curtains of the carriage, opened them
from time to time, and gave out orders as if he had received them from
the Emperor. Victory declared for the Moors, and the defeat of the
Portuguese was so total, that not above fifty of their whole army
escaped. Hieron de Mendoça and Sebastian de Mesa relate, that Don
Sebastian, after having two horses killed under him, was surrounded and
taken; but the party who had secured him, quarrelling among themselves
whose prisoner he was, a Moorish officer rode up and struck the king a
blow over the right eye, which brought him to the ground; when,
despairing of ransom, the others killed him. About twenty years after
this fatal defeat there appeared a stranger at Venice, who called
himself Sebastian, King of Portugal, whom he so perfectly resembled,
that the Portuguese of that city acknowledged him for their sovereign.
He underwent twenty-eight examinations before a committee of the nobles,
in which he gave a distinct account of the manner in which he had passed
his time from the fatal defeat at Alcazar. It was objected, that the
successor of Muley Molucco sent a corpse to Portugal which had been
owned as that of the king by the Portuguese nobility who survived the
battle. To this he replied, that his _valet de chambre_ had produced
that body to facilitate his escape, and that the nobility acted upon the
same motive, and Mesa and Baena confess, that some of this nobility,
after their return to Portugal acknowledged that the corpse was so
disfigured with wounds that it was impossible to know it. He showed
natural marks on his body, which many remembered on the person of the
king whose name he assumed. He entered into a minute detail of the
transactions that had passed between himself and the republic, and
mentioned the secrets of several conversations with the Venetian
ambassadors in the palace of Lisbon. He fell into the hands of the
Spaniards, who conducted him to Naples, where they treated him with the
most barbarous indignities. After they had often exposed him, mounted on
an ass, to the cruel insults of the brutal mob, he was shipped on board
a galley, as a slave. He was then carried to St. Lucar, from thence to a
castle in the heart of Castile, and never was heard of more. The
firmness of his behaviour, his singular modesty and heroical patience,
are mentioned with admiration by Le Clede. To the last he maintained the
truth of his assertions: a word never slipped from his lips which might
countenance the charge of imposture, or justify the cruelty of his
persecutors.
[71] Portugal, when Camoëns wrote his Lusiad, was at the zenith of its
power and splendour. The glorious successes which had attended the arms
of the Portuguese in Africa, had gained them the highest military
reputation. Their fleets covered the ocean. Their dominions and
settlements extended along the western and eastern sides of the vast
African continent. From the Red Sea to China and Japan, they were sole
masters of the riches of the East; and in America, the fertile and
extensive regions of Brazil completed their empire.
[72] Lusitania is the Latin name of a Roman province which comprised the
greater part of the modern kingdom of Portugal, besides a considerable
portion of Leon and Spanish Estremadura.--_Ed._
[73] _The sun._--Imitated, perhaps, from Rutilius, speaking of the Roman
Empire--
_Volvitur ipse tibi, qui conspicit omnia, Phoebus,
Atque tuis ortos in tua condit equos;_
or, more probably, from these lines of Buchanan, addressed to John III.
King of Portugal, the grandfather of Sebastian--
_Inque tuis Phoebus regnis oriensque cadensque
Vix longum fesso conderet axe diem.
Et quæcunque vago se circumvolvit Olympo
Affulget ratibus flamma ministra tuis._
[74] _i.e._ poetic. Aonia was the ancient name of Boeotia, in which
country was a fountain sacred to the Muses, whence Juvenal sings of a
poet--
"Enamoured of the woods, and fitted for drinking
At the fountains of the Aonides."
JUV. Sat. vii. 58.--_Ed._
[75] _To match the Twelve so long by bards renown'd._--The Twelve Peers
of France, often mentioned in the old romances. For the episode of
Magricio and his eleven companions, see the sixth Lusiad.
[76] Afonso in Portuguese. In the first edition Mickle had Alfonso,
which he altered to Alonzo in the second edition.
[77] _Thy grandsires._--John III. King of Portugal, celebrated for a
long and peaceful reign; and the Emperor Charles V., who was engaged in
almost continual wars.
[78] Some critics have condemned Virgil for stopping his narrative to
introduce even a short observation of his own. Milton's beautiful
complaint of his blindness has been blamed for the same reason, as being
no part of the subject of his poem. The address of Camoëns to Don
Sebastian at the conclusion of the tenth Lusiad has not escaped the same
censure; though in some measure undeservedly, as the poet has had the
art to interweave therein some part of the general argument of his poem.
[79] This brave Lusitanian, who was first a shepherd and a famous
hunter, and afterwards a captain of banditti, exasperated at the tyranny
of the Romans, encouraged his countrymen to revolt and shake off the
yoke. Being appointed general, he defeated Vetilius the prætor, who
commanded in Lusitania, or farther Spain. After this he defeated, in
three pitched battles, the prætors, C. Plautius Hypsæus and Claudius
Unimanus, though they led against him very numerous armies. For six
years he continued victorious, putting the Romans to flight wherever he
met them, and laying waste the countries of their allies. Having
obtained such advantages over the proconsul, Servilianus, that the only
choice which was left to the Roman army was death or slavery, the brave
Viriatus, instead of putting them all to the sword, as he could easily
have done, sent a deputation to the general, offering to conclude a
peace with him on this single condition, _That he should continue master
of the country now in his power, and that the Romans should remain
possessed of the rest of Spain_.
The proconsul, who expected nothing but death or slavery, thought these
very favourable and moderate terms, and without hesitation concluded a
peace, which was soon after ratified by the Roman senate and people.
Viriatus, by this treaty, completed the glorious design he had always in
view, which was to erect a kingdom in the vast country he had conquered
from the republic. And, had it not been for the treachery of the Romans,
he would have become, as Florus calls him, the Romulus of Spain.
The senate, desirous to revenge their late defeat, soon after this
peace, ordered Q. Servilius Cæpio to exasperate Viriatus, and force him,
by repeated affronts, to commit the first acts of hostility. But this
mean artifice did not succeed: Viriatus would not be provoked to a
breach of the peace. On this the Conscript Fathers, to the eternal
disgrace of their republic, ordered Cæpio to declare war, and to
proclaim Viriatus, who had given no provocation, an enemy to Rome. To
this baseness Cæpio added one still greater; he corrupted the
ambassadors whom Viriatus had sent to negotiate with him, who, at the
instigation of the Roman, treacherously murdered their protector and
general while he slept.--UNIV. HISTORY.
[80] Sertorius, who was invited by the Lusitanians to defend them
against the Romans. He had a tame white hind, which he had accustomed to
follow him, and from which he pretended to receive the instructions of
Diana. By this artifice he imposed upon the superstition of that people.
[81] _No more in Nysa._--An ancient city in India sacred to Bacchus.
[82] _Urania-Venus._--An Italian poet has given the following
description of the celestial Venus--
_Questa è vaga di Dio Venere bella
Vicina al Sole, e sopra ogni altra estella
Questa è quella beata, a cui s'inchina,
A cui si volge desiando amore,
Chiamata cui del Ciel rara e divina
Beltà che vien tra noi per nostro honore,
Per far le menti desiando al Cielo
Obliare l'altrui col proprio velo._--MARTEL.
[83] See the note in the Second Book on the following passage--
_As when in Ida's bower she stood of yore, etc._
[84] _The manly music of their tongue the same._--Camoëns says:
_E na lingoa, na qual quando imagina,
Com pouca corrupçao cré que he Latina._
Qualifications are never elegant in poetry. Fanshaw's translation and
the original both prove this:
----_their tongue
Which she thinks Latin, with small dross among._
[85] _i.e._ helmet.
[86]---- _and the light turn'd pale._--The thought in the original has
something in it wildly great, though it is not expressed in the happiest
manner of Camoëns--
_O ceo tremeo, e Apollo detorvado
Hum pauco a luz perdeo, como infiado._
[87] Mercury, the messenger of the gods.--_Ed._
[88] _And pastoral Madagascar._--Called by the ancient geographers,
Menuthia and Cerna Ethiopica; by the natives, the Island of the Moon;
and by the Portuguese, the Isle of St. Laurence, on whose festival they
discovered it.
[89] _Praso._--Name of a promontory near the Red Sea.--_Ed._
[90] _Lav'd by the gentle waves._--The original says, the sea showed
them new islands, which it encircled and laved. Thus rendered by
Fanshaw--
_Neptune disclos'd new isles which he did play
About, and with his billows danc't the hay._
[91] The historical foundation of the fable of Phaeton is this. Phaeton
was a young enterprising prince of Libya. Crossing the Mediterranean in
quest of adventures, he landed at Epirus, from whence he went to Italy
to see his intimate friend Cygnus. Phaeton was skilled in astrology,
from whence he arrogated to himself the title of the son of Apollo. One
day in the heat of summer, as he was riding along the banks of the Po,
his horses took fright at a clap of thunder, and plunged into the river,
where, together with their master, they perished. Cygnus, who was a
poet, celebrated the death of his friend in verse, from whence the
fable.--Vid. Plutarch, in Vit. Pyrr.
[92] _Acheron._--The river of Hades, or hell.--_Ed._
[93] _From Abram's race our holy prophet sprung._--Mohammed, who was
descended from Ishmael, the son of Abraham by Hagar.
[94] The Hydaspes was a tributary of the river Indus.--_Ed._
[95] _Calm twilight now._--Camoëns, in this passage, has imitated Homer
in the manner of Virgil: by diversifying the scene he has made the
description his own. The passage alluded to is in the eighth Iliad--
[Greek: Ôs d' hot' en ouranô astra phaeinên amphi amphi selênên
Phainet' ariprepea], etc.
Thus elegantly translated by Pope:--
_As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light,
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene;
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole,
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
And tip with silver every mountain's head;
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies:
The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,
Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light._
[96] The Turks, or Osmanli Turcomans.--_Ed._
[97] Constantinople.
[98] _Straight as he spoke._--The description of the armoury, and
account which Vasco de Gama gives of his religion, consists, in the