The Lusiad; Or, The Discovery of India, an Epic Poem
original, of thirty-two lines, which M. Castera has reduced into the
following sentence: _Leur Governeur fait differentes questions au
Capitaine, qui pour le satisfaire lui explique en peu des mots la
Religion que les Portugais suivent, l'usage des armes dont ils se
servent dans la guerre, et le dessein qui les amène._
[99] _i.e._, helmets.
[100] Coats of mail.
[101] _When Gama's lips Messiah's name confess'd._--This, and the reason
of the Moor's hate, is entirely omitted by Castera. The original is, the
Moor conceived hatred, "knowing they were followers of the truth which
the Son of David taught." Thus rendered by Fanshaw:--
_Knowing they follow that unerring light,
The Son of David holds out in his Book._
Zacocia (governor of Mozambique) made no doubt but our people were of
some Mohammedan country. The mutual exchange of good offices between our
people and these islanders promised a long continuance of friendship,
but it proved otherwise. No sooner did Zacocia understand they were
Christians, than all his kindness was turned into the most bitter
hatred; he began to meditate their ruin, and sought to destroy the
fleet.--OSORIO, Bp. of Sylves, Hist. of the Portug. Discov.
[102] Bacchus, god of wine.
[103] _Whom nine long months his father's thigh conceal'd._--Bacchus was
nourished during his infancy in a cave of mount Meros, which in Greek
signifies a _thigh_. Hence the fable.
[104] Alexander the Great, who on visiting the temple of Jupiter Ammon,
was hailed as son of that deity by his priests.--_Ed._
[105] Bacchus.
[106] _His form divine he cloth'd in human shape_--
_Alecto torvam faciem et furialia membra
Exuit: in vultus sese transformat aniles,
Et frontem obscænum rugis arat._
VIR. Æn. vii.
[107] To be identified with the Sun, in the opinion of later
mythologists; but not so in Homer, with whom Helios (the Sun) is himself
a deity.--_Ed._
[108]
_Thus, when to gain his beauteous charmer's smile,
The youthful lover dares the bloody toil._
This simile is taken from a favourite exercise in Spain, where it is
usual to see young gentlemen of the best families entering the lists to
fight with a bull, adorned with ribbons, and armed with a javelin or
kind of cutlass, which the Spaniards call _Machete_.
[109]
------------_e maldizia
O velho inerte, e a m{=a}y, que o filho cria._
Thus translated by Fanshaw--
------------_curst their ill luck,
Th' old Devil and the Dam that gave them suck._
[110]
_Flints, clods, and javelins hurling as they fly,
As rage, &c.--
Jamque faces et saxa volant, furor arma ministrat._
VIRG. Æn. i.
The Spanish commentator on this place relates a very extraordinary
instance of the _furor arma ministrans_. A Portuguese soldier at the
siege of Diu in the Indies, being surrounded by the enemy, and having no
ball to charge his musket, pulled out one of his teeth, and with it
supplied the place of a bullet.
[111] The italics indicate that there is nothing in the original
corresponding to these lines.--_Ed._
[112] See Virgil's Æneid, bk. ii.--_Ed._
[113] Quiloa is an island, with a town of the same name, on the east
coast of Africa.--_Ed._
[114] _But heavenly Love's fair queen._--When GAMA arrived in the East,
the Moors were the only people who engrossed the trade of those parts.
Jealous of such formidable rivals as the Portuguese, they employed every
artifice to accomplish the destruction of GAMA'S fleet. As the Moors
were acquainted with these seas and spoke the Arabic language, GAMA was
obliged to employ them both as pilots and interpreters. The circumstance
now mentioned by Camoëns is an historical fact. "The Moorish pilot,"
says De Barros, "intended to conduct the Portuguese into Quiloa, telling
them that place was inhabited by Christians; but a sudden storm arising,
drove the fleet from that shore, where death or slavery would have been
the certain fate of GAMA and his companions. The villainy of the pilot
was afterwards discovered. As GAMA was endeavouring to enter the port of
Mombaz his ship struck on a sand-bank, and finding their purpose of
bringing him into the harbour defeated, two of the Moorish pilots leaped
into the sea and swam ashore. Alarmed at this tacit acknowledgment of
guilt, GAMA ordered two other Moorish pilots who remained on board to be
examined by whipping, who, after some time, made a full confession of
their intended villainy. This discovery greatly encouraged GAMA and his
men, who now interpreted the sudden storm which had driven them from
Quiloa as a miraculous interposition of Divine Providence in their
favour.
[115] _i.e._ Mohammed.--_Ed._
[116] After GAMA had been driven from Quiloa by a sudden storm, the
assurances of the Mozambique pilot, that the city was chiefly inhabited
by Christians, strongly inclined him to enter the harbour of Mombas.
[117] "There were," says Osorius, "ten men in the fleet under sentence
of death, whose lives had been spared on condition that, wherever they
might be landed, they should explore the country and make themselves
acquainted with the manners and laws of the people."
During the reign of Emmanuel, and his predecessor John II., few
criminals were executed in Portugal. These great and political princes
employed the lives which were forfeited to the public in the most
dangerous undertakings of public utility. In their foreign expeditions
the condemned criminals were sent upon the most hazardous undertakings.
If death was their fate, it was the punishment they had merited: if
successful in what was required, their crimes were expiated; and often
they rendered their country the greatest atonement for their guilt which
men in their circumstances could possibly make. What multitudes every
year, in the prime of their life, end their days in Great Britain by the
hands of the executioner! That the legislature _might_ devise means to
make the greatest part of these lives useful to society is a fact, which
surely cannot be disputed; though, perhaps, the remedy of an evil so
shocking to humanity may be at some distance.
[118] Semele was the mother of Bacchus, but, as he was prematurely born,
Jupiter, his father, sewed him up in his thigh until he came to
maturity.--_Ed._
[119]
_On it, the picture of that shape he placed,
In which the Holy Spirit did alight,
The picture of the dove, so white, so chaste,
On the blest Virgin's head, so chaste, so white._
In these lines, the best of all Fanshaw's, the happy repetition "so
chaste, so white," is a beauty which, though not contained in the
original, the present translator was unwilling to lose.
[120] See the Preface.
[121] When GAMA lay at anchor among the islands of St. George, near
Mozambique, "there came three Ethiopians on board (says Faria y Sousa)
who, seeing St. Gabriel painted on the poop, fell on their knees in
token of their Christianity, which had been preached to them in the
primitive times, though now corrupted." Barros, c. 4, and Castaneda, l.
i. c. 9, report, that the Portuguese found two or three Abyssinian
Christians in the city of Mombas, who had an oratory in their house. The
following short account of the Christians of the East may perhaps be
acceptable. In the south parts of Malabar, about 200,000 of the
inhabitants professed Christianity before the arrival of the Portuguese.
They use the Syriac language in their services, and read the Scriptures
in that tongue, and call themselves Christians of St. Thomas, by which
apostle their ancestors had been converted. For 1300 years they had been
under the Patriarch of Babylon, who appointed their _Mutran_, or
archbishop. Dr. Geddes, in his History of the Church of Malabar, relates
that Francisco Roz, a Jesuit missionary, complained to Menezes, the
Portuguese archbishop of Goa, that when he showed these people an image
of the Virgin Mary, they cried out, "Away with that filthiness, we are
Christians, and do not adore idols."
Dom Frey Aleixo de Menezes, archbishop of Goa, "endeavoured to thrust
upon the church of Malabar the whole mass of popery, which they were
before unacquainted with."--Millar's History of the Propag. of
Christianity.
[122] Venus.
[123] _Proud of her kindred birth._--The French translator has the
following note on this place:--"This is one of the places which discover
our author's intimate acquaintance with mythology, and at the same time
how much attention his allegory requires. Many readers, on finding that
the protectress of the Lusians sprung from the sea, would be apt to
exclaim, Behold, the birth of the terrestrial Venus! How can a nativity
so infamous be ascribed to the celestial Venus, who represents Religion?
I answer, that Camoëns had not his eye on those fables, which derive the
birth of Venus from the foam of the waves, mixed with the blood which
flowed from the dishonest wound of Saturn: he carries his views higher;
his Venus is from a fable more noble. Nigidius relates that two fishes
one day conveyed an egg to the seashore. This egg was hatched by two
pigeons whiter than snow, and gave birth to the Assyrian Venus, which,
in the pagan theology, is the same with the celestial. She instructed
mankind in religion, gave them the lessons of virtue and the laws of
equity. Jupiter, in reward of her labours, promised to grant her
whatever she desired. She prayed him to give immortality to the two
fishes, who had been instrumental in her birth, and the fishes were
accordingly placed in the Zodiac, the sign Pisces.... This fable agrees
perfectly with Religion, as I could clearly show; but I think it more
proper to leave to the ingenious reader the pleasure of tracing the
allegory."
[124] _Doto, Nyse, and Nerine._--Cloto, or Clotho, as Castera observes,
has by some error crept into almost all the Portuguese editions of the
Lusiad. Clotho was one of the Fates, and neither Hesiod, Homer, nor
Virgil has given such a name to any of the Nereids; but in the ninth
Æneid Doto is mentioned--
----_magnique jubebo
Æquoris esse Deas, qualis Nereïa Doto
Et Galatea secant spumantem pectore pontum._
The Nereids, in the Lusiad, says Castera, are the virtues divine and
human. In the first book they accompany the Portuguese fleet--
----_before the bounding prows
The lovely forms of sea-born nymphs arose._
[125] The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in
the summer.--PROVERBS xxx. 25.--_Ed._
[126] Imitated from Virgil--
_Cymothoë simul, et Triton adnixus acuto
Detrudunt naves scopulo._--VIRG. Æn. i.
[127] Latona, says the fable, flying from the serpent Python, and faint
with thirst, came to a pond, where some Lycian peasants were cutting the
bulrushes. In revenge of the insults which they offered her in
preventing her to drink, she changed them into frogs. This fable, says
Castera, like almost all the rest, is drawn from history. Philocorus, as
cited by Boccace, relates, that the Rhodians having declared war against
the Lycians, were assisted by some troops from Delos, who carried the
image of Latona on their standards. A detachment of these going to drink
at a lake in Lycia, a crowd of peasants endeavoured to prevent them. An
encounter ensued; the peasants fled to the lake for shelter, and were
there slain. Some months afterwards their companions came in search of
their corpses, and finding an unusual quantity of frogs, imagined,
according to the superstition of their age, that the souls of their
friends appeared to them under that metamorphosis.
To some it may, perhaps, appear needless to vindicate Camoëns, in a
point wherein he is supported by the authority of Homer and Virgil. Yet,