Jupiter's Promise to Venus
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Formosa filha minha, não temais Perigo algum nos vossos Lusitanos, Nem que ninguém comigo possa mais, Que esses chorosos olhos soberanos; Que eu vos prometo, filha, que vejais Esquecerem-se Gregos e Romanos, Pelos ilustres feitos que esta gente Há-de fazer nas partes do Oriente.
Beautiful daughter of mine, do not fear any danger to your Lusitanians, nor that anyone should hold more sway with me than those sovereign, tear-filled eyes of yours; for I promise you, my daughter, that you will see Greeks and Romans forgotten, because of the illustrious deeds this people will accomplish in the lands of the East.
In the council of the gods, Venus has wept over the storm-threatened Portuguese. Her father Jupiter now consoles her and foretells the glory their deeds will win in the East.
Jupiter answers Venus's tears with a father's reassurance. He tells her the Portuguese are in no danger, that nothing moves him more than her weeping eyes, and he swears an oath: the deeds this small nation will do in the East will be so great that the old glories of Greece and Rome will fade from memory. It is the divine promise that underwrites the whole poem's confidence.
What a first reader can miss is that the scene is lifted straight from the opening of Virgil's Aeneid, where Venus pleads with Jupiter over her storm-tossed Trojans and he unrolls the future of Rome. Camões puts Portugal in the place of Aeneas, and then makes Jupiter promise to eclipse the very Rome that Virgil's Jupiter had promised. The line about Greeks and Romans being forgotten is also Camões speaking about his own book: it is his claim to outdo Homer and Virgil at their own game.
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