The Grandsons of Hagar
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Estão de Agar os netos quase rindo Do poder dos Cristãos fraco e pequeno, As terras como suas repartindo Antemão, entre o exército Agareno, Que com título falso possuindo Está o famoso nome Sarraceno. Assim também com falsa conta e nua, À nobre terra alheia chamam sua.
The descendants of Hagar stand almost laughing at the weak and paltry power of the Christians, parceling out the lands beforehand, as though they were their own, among the Hagarene host — which, under a false title, holds the famous name of Saracen. In the same way, with reckoning equally false and empty, they call a noble land that belongs to others their own.
In Canto 3, Gama recounts Portuguese history to the king of Melinde. Here the Moorish host, sure of an easy win, mocks the small Christian power and carves up the land before the battle is even fought.
The stanza freezes the enemy in a posture of contempt. The Moorish army stands there almost laughing at how weak and small the Christian force looks, and so certain of winning that they split up the map in advance, handing out lands that are not yet theirs. The closing couplet drives the charge home: with a reckoning as false as it is empty, they call a land that belongs to others their own.
What a first reader misses is that the insult begins with a name. Medieval Christians liked to claim that "Saracen" came from Sarah, Abraham's free wife — a flattering pedigree the Moors had no right to, since Scripture (Genesis 16 and 21) traces them instead to Hagar the slave-woman and her son Ishmael. So Camões calls them "os netos de Agar," grandsons of Hagar, and says they hold the proud name Saracen only "com título falso." The false claim to territory in the last line simply repeats a lie already built into what they call themselves.
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