The Portuguese Achilles
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E canta como lá se embarcaria Em Belém o remédio deste dano, Sem saber o que em si ao mar traria, O grão Pacheco, Aquiles Lusitano. O peso sentirão, quando entraria, O curvo lenho e o férvido Oceano, Quando mais n'água os troncos que gemerem Contra sua natureza se meterem.
And she sings how, in Belém, the remedy for this harm would embark — without knowing what he would bring upon himself out to sea — the great Pacheco, the Lusitanian Achilles. They will feel the weight, when the curved hull and the boiling Ocean take him aboard, when the timbers, groaning against their own nature, sink deeper into the water than wood should.
On the Isle of Love a Siren sings the deeds still to come. Here she foretells Duarte Pacheco Pereira embarking at Belém for India, the 'remedy' for the harm awaiting Portugal there.
A Siren on the Isle of Love sings the deeds still to come, and here she names Duarte Pacheco Pereira, who will embark at Belém — the Lisbon quay from which Portugal's ships sailed east — as the 'remedy' for the damage awaiting the Portuguese in India. Camões crowns him with the highest epithet he can give a soldier: Aquiles Lusitano, the Portuguese Achilles, the man who held Cochin against the army of the Zamorin.
The strange picture under it is the groaning wood. The ship, carrying so great a man, will feel a weight beyond what timber can bear; the trunks sink lower than their nature allows, straining against their own physics. It is hyperbole used as honor — the hero is simply too heavy for an ordinary hull. And 'sem saber o que traria' carries a quiet shadow: Pacheco sailed not knowing his own end. After the glory of Cochin he was disgraced and died in poverty, a fate Camões' first readers would have felt behind the praise.
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