Maria Pleads Like Venus
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Não de outra sorte a tímida Maria Falando está, que a triste Vénus, quando A Júpiter, seu pai, favor pedia Para Eneias, seu filho, navegando; Que a tanta piedade o comovia Que, caído das mãos o raio infando, Tudo o clemente Padre lhe concede, Pesando-lhe do pouco que lhe pede.
The timid Maria speaks in no other way than the sorrowful Venus did, when she begged her father Jupiter for favor toward her son Aeneas as he sailed; so much did her plea move him that, letting the dread thunderbolt fall from his hands, the merciful Father grants her everything, grieved only that she asks for so little.
In Canto 3, Camões likens Maria — daughter of King Afonso IV, married into Castile — begging her royal father's aid to Venus imploring Jupiter on behalf of Aeneas.
The whole stanza is a single simile: as Venus once begged Jupiter, so Maria — daughter of King Afonso IV, married into Castile — now weeps before her royal father for aid. Camões borrows the machinery of the Aeneid, where Venus pleads for the sea-tossed Aeneas, to give a diplomatic errand the weight of a council of the gods, and to seat a mortal king in Jupiter's place.
The turn hides in the last line. Jupiter grants everything not because the request is heavy but because it is light: he is sorry she asks for so little. Camões adds his own touches to Virgil — the thunderbolt slipping from the god's hands, the note of regret — so that the point lands on mercy rather than power. What a first reader misses is that the god's grief is generosity overflowing the petition, not reluctance to meet it.
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