The Riches of the Levant
Read the full text in our reader
E se buscando vás mercadoria Que produze o aurífero Levante, Canela, cravo, ardente especiaria, Ou droga salutífera e prestante; Ou se queres luzente pedraria, O rubi fino, o rígido diamante, Daqui levarás tudo tão sobejo Com que faças o fim a teu desejo
And if you come seeking merchandise that the gold-bearing Levant produces — cinnamon, clove, fiery spice, or some healthful and useful drug; or if you want gleaming gems, the fine ruby, the hard diamond — from here you will carry away everything in such abundance that you can fulfill your every desire.
Still at Mombasa, a voice enticing the Portuguese lists the treasures of the East — spices and gems — that Gama could carry home from this port. The pitch is all abundance, with the trap left unspoken.
The speaker runs through a merchant's inventory of the East: spices first, then the rarer trade in medicinal "drugs," then the jewels. It is a sales pitch aimed straight at what a trading fleet wants, and it promises that this one port already holds all of it, in surplus — no need to sail further.
That abundance is the hook. A first reader hears generosity; the poem is setting a trap. This warm invitation comes at Mombasa, where the welcome is a lie engineered by Bacchus, who wants the Portuguese destroyed before they reach India. The riches are real enough as a catalogue, but the offer to hand them over "from here" is meant to stop the voyage short and lure the sailors within reach.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Os Lusíadas 2.4 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 2.4 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/lusiadas/2.4/