Bacchus Takes Human Form
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Isto dizendo, irado e quase insano, Sobre a terra africana descendeu, Onde vestindo a forma e gesto humano, Para o Prasso sabido se moveu. E por melhor tecer o astuto engano, No gesto natural se converteu Dum Mouro, em Moçambique conhecido Velho, sábio, e co'o Xeque mui valido.
Saying this, enraged and almost insane, he descended upon the African land, where, putting on human form and bearing, he moved toward the well-known Prasso. And, the better to weave his cunning deceit, he transformed himself into the natural likeness of a Moor, known in Mozambique, an old man, wise, and much favored by the Sheikh.
Having finished his angry speech in the divine council, Baco (Bacchus), the enemy of the Portuguese, drops to the African coast and disguises himself as a trusted old Moor of Mozambique in order to sabotage Gama's arrival from the inside.
Bacchus, having just finished his furious speech in the council of the gods, drops out of heaven onto the coast of Africa. He pulls on a human body and heads for the promontory of Prasso, near Mozambique. To make his trap convincing he does not invent a stranger but copies a real man exactly: an old, respected Moor whom the island already knows and whom the local Sheikh trusts. This is the opening move of the god's campaign to wreck Gama's fleet before it can round the coast.
What a first reader misses is how old the machinery is. A hostile deity putting on mortal skin to meddle in a voyage comes straight out of Virgil and Homer, where Juno, Athena, and Iris routinely disguise themselves to steer events. Camões even repeats the word gesto (form, bearing) twice in eight lines, quietly marking the shape-change. The Christian voyage is being sabotaged by a pagan god using pagan epic's oldest device, and the disguise works precisely because it borrows a trusted local face rather than a fiction.
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