The Lusiad; Or, The Discovery of India, an Epic Poem
some others, took the management of the helms. At last, after having
many days withstood the tempest, and a perfidious conspiracy, _invicto
animo_, with an unconquered mind, a favourable change of weather revived
the spirits of the fleet, and allowed them to double the Cape of Good
Hope.--_Extr. from_ Osorius's Historia.
[379] GAMA and his followers were, from the darkness of the Portuguese
complexion, thought to be Moors. When GAMA arrived in the East, a
considerable commerce was carried on between the Indies and the Red Sea
by the Moorish traders, by whom the gold mines of Sofala, and the riches
of East Africa were enjoyed. The traffic was brought by land to Cairo,
from whence Europe was supplied by the Venetian and Antwerpian
merchants.
[380] "O nome lhe ficou dos Bons-Signais."
[381] Raphael. See Tobit, ch. v. and xii.--_Ed._
[382] It was the custom of the Portuguese navigators to erect crosses on
the shores of new-discovered countries. GAMA carried materials for
pillars of stone with him, and erected six crosses during his
expedition. They bore the name and arms of the king of Portugal, and
were intended as proofs of the title which accrues from first discovery.
[383] This poetical description of the scurvy is by no means
exaggerated. It is what sometimes really happens in the course of a long
voyage.
[384] King of Ithaca.
[385] Æneas.
[386] Homer.
[387] Virgil.
[388] The Muses.
[389] Homer's Odyssey, bk. x. 460.
[390] See the Odyssey, bk. ix.
[391] See Æn. v. 833
[392] The Lotophagi, so named from the lotus, are thus described by
Homer:--
"Not prone to ill, nor strange to foreign guest,
They eat, they drink, and Nature gives the feast;
The trees around them all their fruit produce;
Lotos the name; divine, nectareous juice;
(Thence call'd Lotophagi) which whoso tastes,
Insatiate, riots in the sweet repasts,
Nor other home, nor other care intends,
But quits his home, his country, and his friends:
The three we sent, from off th' enchanting ground
We dragg'd reluctant, and by force we bound:
The rest in haste forsook the pleasing shore,
Or, the charm tasted, had return'd no more."
POPE, Odyss. ix. 103.
The Libyan lotus is a shrub like a bramble, the berries like the myrtle,
purple when ripe, and about the size of an olive. Mixed with bread-corn,
it was used as food for slaves. They also made an agreeable wine of it,
but which would not keep above ten days. See Pope's note _in loco_.
[393] _In skins confin'd the blust'ring winds control._--The gift of
Æolus to Ulysses.
"The adverse winds in leathern bags he brac'd,
Compress'd their force, and lock'd each struggling blast:
For him the mighty sire of gods assign'd,
The tempest's lord, the tyrant of the wind;
His word alone the list'ning storms obey,
To smooth the deep, or swell the foamy sea.
These, in my hollow ship the monarch hung,
Securely fetter'd by a silver thong;
But Zephyrus exempt, with friendly gales }
He charg'd to fill, and guide the swelling sails: }
Rare gift! but oh, what gift to fools avails?" }
POPE, Odyss. x. 20.
The companions of Ulysses imagined that these bags contained some
valuable treasure, and opened them while their leader slept. The
tempests bursting out, drove the fleet from Ithaca, which was then in
sight, and was the cause of a new train of miseries.
[394] See the third Æneid.
[395] See the sixth Æneid, and the eleventh Odyssey.
[396] Alexander the Great.--_Ed._
[397] Achilles, son of Peleus.--_Ed._
[398] Virgil, born at Mantua.--_Ed._
[399] Don Francisco de Gama, grandson of Vasco de Gama, the hero of the
Lusiad.--_Ed._
[400] Cleopatra.
[401] Every display of eastern luxury and magnificence was lavished in
the fishing parties on the Nile, with which Cleopatra amused Mark
Antony, when at any time he showed symptoms of uneasiness, or seemed
inclined to abandon the effeminate life which he led with his mistress.
At one of these parties, Mark Antony, having procured divers to put
fishes upon his hooks while under the water, he very gallantly boasted
to his mistress of his great dexterity in angling. Cleopatra perceived
his art, and as gallantly outwitted him. Some other divers received her
orders, and in a little while Mark Antony's line brought up a fried fish
in place of a live one, to the vast entertainment of the queen, and all
the convivial company. Octavius was at this time on his march to decide
who should be master of the world.
[402] The friendship of the Portuguese and Melindians was of long
continuance. Alvaro Cabral, the second admiral who made the voyage to
India, in an engagement with the Moors off the coast of Sofala, took two
ships richly freighted from the mines of that country. On finding that
Xeques Fonteyma, the commander, was uncle to the King of Melinda, he
restored the valuable prize, and treated him with the utmost courtesy.
Their good offices were reciprocal. By the information of the King of
Melinda, Cabral escaped the treachery of the King of Calicut. The Kings
of Mombaz and Quiloa, irritated at the alliance with Portugal, made
several depredations on the subjects of Melinda, who in return were
effectually revenged by their European allies.
[403] A giant.
[404] _Two gods contending._--According to the fable, Neptune and
Minerva disputed the honour of giving a name to the city of Athens. They
agreed to determine the contest by a display of their wisdom and power,
in conferring the most beneficial gift on mankind. Neptune struck the
earth with his trident and produced the horse, whose bounding motions
are emblematical of the agitation of the sea. Pallas commanded the
olive-tree, the symbol of peace, and of riches, to spring forth. The
victory was adjudged to the goddess, from whom the city was named
Athens. The taste of the ancient Grecians clothed almost every
occurrence in mythological allegory. The founders of Athens, it is most
probable, disputed whether their new city should be named from the
fertility of the soil or from the marine situation of Attica. The former
opinion prevailed, and the town received its name in honour of the
goddess of the olive-tree--_Ath{=e}n{=e}_.
[405] _While Pallas here appears to wave her hand._--As Neptune struck
the earth with his trident, Minerva, says the fable, struck the earth
with her lance. That she waved her hand while the olive boughs spread,
is a fine poetical attitude, and varies the picture from that of
Neptune, which follows.
[406] _Though wide, and various, o'er the sculptur'd stone._--The
description of palaces is a favourite topic several times touched upon
by the two great masters of epic poetry, in which they have been happily
imitated by their three greatest disciples among the moderns, Camoëns,
Tasso, and Milton. The description of the palace of Neptune has great
merit. Nothing can be more in place than the picture of chaos and the
four elements. The war of the gods, and the contest of Neptune and
Minerva are touched with the true boldness of poetical colouring. To
show to the English reader that the Portuguese poet is, in his manner,
truly classical, is the intention of many of these notes.
[407] Bacchus.
[408] The description of Triton, who, as Fanshaw says--
"Was a great nasty clown,"
is in the style of the classics. His parentage is differently related.
Hesiod makes him the son of Neptune and Amphitrité. By Triton, in the
physical sense of the fable, is meant the noise, and by Salacé, the
mother by some ascribed to him, the salt of the ocean. The origin of the
fable of Triton, it is probable, was founded on the appearance of a sea
animal, which, according to some ancient naturalists, in the upward
parts resembles the human figure. Pausanias relates a wonderful story of
a monstrously large one, which often came ashore on the meadows of
Boeotia. Over his head was a kind of finny cartilage, which, at a
distance, appeared like hair; the body covered with brown scales; the
nose and ears like the human; the mouth of a dreadful width, jagged with
the teeth of a panther; the eyes of a greenish hue; the hands divided
into fingers, the nails of which were crooked, and of a shelly
substance. This monster, whose extremities ended in a tail like a
dolphin's, devoured both men and beasts as they chanced in his way. The
citizens of Tanagra, at last, contrived his destruction. They set a
large vessel full of wine on the sea shore. Triton got drunk with it,
and fell into a profound sleep, in which condition the Tanagrians
beheaded him, and afterwards, with great propriety, hung up his body in
the temple of Bacchus; where, says Pausanias, it continued a long time.
[409] _A shell of purple on his head he bore._--In the Portuguese--
_Na cabeça por gorra tinha posta
Huma mui grandé casco de lagosta._
Thus rendered by Fanshaw--
"He had (for a montera[413]) on his crown
The shell of a red lobster overgrown."
[410] Neptune.
[411] _And changeful Proteus, whose prophetic mind._--The fullest and
best account of the fable of Proteus is in the fourth Odyssey.
[412] Thetis.
[413] Montera, the Spanish word for a huntsman's cap.
[414] _She who the rage of Athamas to shun._--Ino, the daughter of
Cadmus and Hermione, and second spouse of Athamas, king of Thebes. The
fables of her fate are various. That which Camoëns follows is the most
common. Athamas, seized with madness, imagined that his spouse was a
lioness, and her two sons young lions. In this frenzy he slew Learchus,
and drove the mother and her other son, Melicertus, into the sea. The
corpse of the mother was thrown ashore on Megara and that of the son at
Corinth. They were afterwards deified, the one as a sea goddess, the
other as the god of harbours.
[415] _And Glaucus lost to joy._--A fisherman, says the fable, who, on
eating a certain herb, was turned into a sea god. Circé was enamoured of
him, and in revenge of her slighted love, poisoned the fountain where
his mistress usually bathed. By the force of the enchantment the
favoured Scylla was changed into a hideous monster, whose loins were
surrounded with the ever-barking heads of dogs and wolves. Scylla, on
this, threw herself into the sea, and was metamorphosed into the rock
which bears her name. The rock Scylla at a distance appears like the
statue of a woman. The furious dashing of the waves in the cavities,
which are level with the water, resembles the barking of wolves and
dogs.
[416] Thyoneus, a name of Bacchus.
[417] _High from the roof the living amber glows.--_
"From the arched roof,
Pendent by subtle magic, many a row
Of starry lamps, and blazing cressets, fed
With naptha and asphaltus, yielded light
As from a sky."
MILTON.
[418] The Titans.
[419] The north wind.
[420] _And rent the Mynian sails._--The sails of the Argonauts,
inhabitants of Mynia.
[421] See the first note on the first book of the Lusiad.
[422]
_In haughty England, where the winter spreads
His snowy mantle o'er the shining meads.--_
In the original--
_Là na grande Inglaterra, que de neve
Boreal sempre abunda;_
that is, "In illustrious England, always covered with northern snow."
Though the translator was willing to retain the manner of Homer, he
thought it proper to correct the error in natural history fallen into by
Camoëns. Fanshaw seems to have been sensible of the mistake of his
author, and has given the following (uncountenanced by the Portuguese)
in place of the eternal snows ascribed to his country:--
"In merry England, which (from cliffs that stand
Like hills of snow) once Albion's name did git."