What the Fates Told Bacchus
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Ouvido tinha aos Fados que viria Uma gente fortíssima de Espanha Pelo mar alto, a qual sujeitaria Da índia tudo quanto Dóris banha, E com novas vitórias venceria A fama antiga, ou sua, ou fosse estranha. Altamente lhe dói perder a glória, De que Nisa celebra inda a memória
He had heard from the Fates that a most mighty people from Iberia would come across the high sea, a people who would subjugate all of India that Doris bathes, and with fresh victories would surpass every ancient fame, whether their own or another's. It grieves him deeply to lose the glory whose memory Nysa still keeps alive.
Bacchus, patron of the East, has heard a prophecy: a mighty people from Iberia will come by sea and subjugate India, eclipsing every ancient fame. It grieves him to lose the glory Nysa still keeps.
The stanza is a prophecy overheard. Bacchus, god of the East, learns from the Fates that a strong seafaring nation will come and take everything the sea touches in India, outdoing every reputation before it. What he really dreads is not the conquest but the eclipse: a new fame swallowing the old, including his own.
The hinge a first reader misses is Nisa. Nysa was the Indian city sacred to Bacchus, where legend says he was raised and worshipped; classical tradition even made India the site of his eastern triumph. So the god's private grief is exact and personal, not vague envy. The Portuguese are coming to the one place that still remembers him as a conqueror, and their glory threatens to erase the record his own cult keeps.
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