Venus's Complaint
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Sempre eu cuidei, ó Padre poderoso, Que, para as cousas que eu do peito amasse, Te achasse brando, afábil e amoroso, Posto que a algum contrário lhe pesasse; Mas, pois que contra mim te vejo iroso, Sem que to merecesse, nem te errasse, Faça-se como Baco determina; Assentarei enfim que fui mofina.
I always thought, O powerful Father, that for the things I loved from my heart I would find you gentle, affable and loving, even if that grieved some adversary; but since I see you angry against me, without my deserving it of you or wronging you, let it be done as Bacchus determines. I will conclude at last that I was simply born unlucky.
Venus, patron of the Portuguese, pleads with Jupiter, wounded that he now seems to side with Bacchus's hostility against Gama's fleet.
This is Venus's complaint to Jupiter. She had always assumed that whenever she loved something, her father would meet it gently, even if that annoyed some rival among the gods. Now she finds him angry with her for no fault she can name, and she throws up her hands: let Bacchus have his way, she was simply born unlucky.
The stanza turns on its last word, mofina. Venus does not accuse Jupiter of injustice so much as confess herself hapless, luckless, fated to lose. It is a very Portuguese kind of resignation, dropped into a goddess's mouth, and it is also strategy: by playing the wronged, ill-starred daughter rather than arguing her rights, she moves Jupiter more surely than any claim of law could. Camões is reworking Venus's plea to Jupiter in Aeneid I, where she likewise begs for her favored people against a hostile power.
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Os Lusíadas 2.39 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/lusiadas/2.39/