Mercury Takes Wing
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Já pelo ar o Cileneu voava; Com as asas nos pés à Terra desce; Sua vara fatal na mão levava, Com que os olhos cansados adormece: Com esta, as tristes almas revocava Do Inferno, e o vento lhe obedece. Na cabeça o galero costumado. E desta arte a Melinde foi chegado.
Already the Cyllenian god was flying through the air; with wings on his feet he descends to Earth. In his hand he carried his fateful wand, the one with which he lulls weary eyes to sleep, and with which he used to recall the sorrowful souls from the Underworld; and the wind obeys him. On his head sat the customary traveller's hat. And in this fashion he came at last to Malindi.
Having won Jupiter's promise, Venus sees Mercury dispatched to earth. The Cyllenian god arms himself with winged feet, wand, and traveller's hat, and speeds toward Malindi to prepare a friendly welcome for Gama.
This is the launch of Mercury's errand. Jupiter has decided the Portuguese will be welcomed, and the messenger god now drops from the sky toward Malindi to arrange it. Camões pauses the plot to equip him piece by piece: winged feet, the wand, the wide-brimmed hat. The catalogue is the point, because every item names an attribute a Renaissance reader already knew.
The one thing easy to miss is that this is a lift, almost line for line, from Virgil. In Aeneid 4 Mercury takes up the same wand that summons and dismisses souls from the dead before he flies down to Carthage. Camões keeps the wand's underworld power ("revocava do Inferno") even though Mercury only needs it here to calm a harbor, so the borrowed grandeur outweighs the small task. The deeper move is that a pagan god is quietly made an agent of Christian providence, steering history toward Gama.
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