We Are Not Robbers
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Não somos roubadores, que passando Pelas fracas cidades descuidadas, A ferro e a fogo as gentes vão matando, Por roubar-lhe as fazendas cobiçadas; Mas da soberba Europa navegando, Imos buscando as terras apartadas Da Índia grande e rica, por mandado De um Rei que temos, alto e sublimado.
We are not robbers who, passing by the weak, unguarded cities, go slaughtering the people with sword and fire in order to strip them of their coveted wealth; but rather, sailing from proud Europe, we go seeking the far-off lands of great and rich India, by the command of a King we serve, lofty and exalted.
Still addressing the King of Melinde, Gama draws a sharp line between the Portuguese and the coastal raiders of the age: they come not to plunder but as envoys of a distant king, bound for India.
Gama is pleading a case. Having been received with suspicion on the East African coast, he insists the Portuguese are envoys, not corsairs: they do not fall on defenseless towns to burn and loot. The whole stanza turns on that contrast between plunder and mission, ending on the one word that is meant to settle it, the authority of a distant, exalted king.
What a first reader misses is how much the disclaimer protests. The Swahili port cities had good reason to read these armed strangers as raiders, and within a decade Portuguese fleets did bombard and sack ports along this very coast. Camões, writing seventy years on, puts the denial in Gama's mouth knowing what came after, so the noble claim carries a shadow the speaker cannot see.
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