The Duty of a King
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E porque é, de vassalos o exercício, Que os membros tem regidos da cabeça, Não quererás, pois tens de Rei o ofício, Que ninguém a seu Rei desobedeça; Mas as mercês e o grande benefício, Que ora acha em ti, promete que conheça Em tudo aquilo que ele e os seus puderem, Enquanto os rios para o mar correrem.
And because it is the nature of subjects that their limbs are governed by the head, you would not wish, since you hold the office of a King, that anyone should disobey his own King. But the kindnesses and the great favor that he now finds in you, he promises he will repay in everything that he and his people can do, for as long as the rivers run down to the sea.
Still on the coast of Mozambique, the friendly king of Melinde sends word of loyalty to Vasco da Gama. He frames obedience as the natural order of a well-governed body, then pledges lasting service.
The king of Melinde is pledging loyalty, and he does it by argument rather than flattery. He builds a small political theory: a state is a body, subjects are limbs, the ruler is the head, and obedience follows from that structure as naturally as an arm obeys the mind. Then he turns it into a compliment to Gama, a fellow king's man, and closes with a vow of gratitude that lasts as long as rivers flow.
What a first reader misses is that the body-and-head image is not decoration. It was a standard of Renaissance political thought, the "body politic," and Camões uses it to make hierarchy sound like health rather than force. The final line borrows a classical formula for eternity (as long as rivers run to the sea) that runs back through Virgil and Ovid, quietly lending a foreign king's promise the weight of an oath sworn by nature itself.
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