Neither Marathon nor Thermopylae
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Aquele que nos campos Maratónios O grão poder de Dário estrui e rende, Ou quem, com quatro mil Lacedemónios, O passo de Termópilas defende, Nem o mancebo Cocles dos Ausónios, Que com todo o poder Tusco contende Em defensa da ponte, ou Quinto Fábio, Foi como este na guerra forte e sábio.
He who on the fields of Marathon destroys and subdues the great power of Darius, or he who with four thousand Lacedaemonians defends the pass of Thermopylae; nor the youth Cocles of the Italians, who with all the Tuscan power contends in defense of the bridge, or Quintus Fabius — none was, like this man, so strong and wise in war.
From the epic's closing catalogue of heroes: a nymph measures the great warriors of antiquity against the Portuguese figure being praised, and finds each of them the lesser man.
The stanza is one long roll-call of antiquity's greatest soldiers, and it withholds its point until the very last word. Miltiades breaking Darius at Marathon, Leonidas and his handful of Spartans at Thermopylae, Horatius Cocles alone against the whole Etruscan army on the bridge, Fabius the delayer who wore Hannibal down: each is named only to be set below the Portuguese hero the speaker is really praising.
What a first reader misses is the grammar of the boast. The whole thing is a priamel — a stacked "not even X, not even Y" — whose subject of comparison arrives only at "como este," like this one. The pairing that lands it is "forte e sábio," strong and wise: the Renaissance ideal of fortitudo joined to sapientia, the soldier who is also a mind, which Camões insists no ancient quite reached.
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