Venus Rides to the Fleet
Read the full text in our reader
Nos ombros de um Tritão, com gesto aceso, Vai a linda Dione furiosa; Não sente quem a leva o doce peso, De soberbo com carga tão formosa. Já chegam perto donde o vento teso Enche as velas da frota belicosa; Repartem-se e rodeiam nesse instante As naus ligeiras, que iam por diante.
On the shoulders of a Triton, with a kindled look, the lovely Dione rides in fury; the one who bears her does not feel the sweet weight, proud of so beautiful a burden. Now they draw near to where the taut wind fills the sails of the warlike fleet; and in that instant they split apart and circle the swift ships, which were sailing on ahead.
Venus and her sea-nymphs speed across the water to reach Gama's fleet. Here the goddess (named Dione) rides on the shoulders of a Triton, and the nereids close in around the moving ships.
The stanza is pure sea-pageant. Venus, called Dione, is carried on a Triton's shoulders, and her nymphs fan out and ring the Portuguese ships just as they gather speed. Camões freezes the moment of contact: the wind is taut, the sails are full, and the divine escort catches up with the mortal fleet at the last instant before the ships would have raced past.
The detail a first reader skims is why she is furiosa. This is not a lover's caprice but protective haste: Venus is rushing to steer the fleet away from the ambush waiting at Mombasa, the trap the Muslim pilots have set. The comic-erotic touch of the Triton, so proud of his lovely cargo that he cannot feel her weight, is Ovidian machinery, but the anger is strategic. She arrives furious because she arrives just in time.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Os Lusíadas 2.21 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the Os Lusíadas — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Os Lusíadas 2.21 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/lusiadas/2.21/