Heaven's Vengeance, Not the Arm
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E se tu tantas almas só pudeste Mandar ao Reino escuro de Cocito, Quando a santa Cidade desfizeste Do povo pertinaz no antigo rito: Permissão e vingança foi celeste, E não força de braço, ó nobre Tito, Que assim dos Vates foi profetizado, E depois por Jesu certificado.
And if you alone were able to send so many souls to the dark Kingdom of Cocytus, when you destroyed the holy City of that people stubborn in their ancient rite — it was Heaven's permission and Heaven's vengeance, and not the strength of your arm, O noble Titus, for it was thus foretold by the Prophets, and afterward confirmed by Jesus.
The poet turns aside from Portuguese history to address the Roman emperor Titus, whose destruction of Jerusalem he reads as Heaven's decree rather than human might.
The poet breaks off from Portuguese history to address the Roman emperor Titus directly, granting him a grim feat: the sack of Jerusalem in 70 AD, which sent countless souls down to Cocytus, one of the rivers of the underworld. But the whole sentence is built to take the credit away again. Permission and vengeance were celeste — Heaven's warrant and Heaven's revenge — and not the force of Titus's arm.
This is not really about Titus. It is an argument by analogy about the lopsided victory Camões has just narrated: if even Jerusalem fell by God's decree rather than by a general's strength, then an outnumbered Christian win was likewise the work of Heaven. The barbed phrase povo pertinaz no antigo rito — the people clinging stubbornly to the old Law — carries the medieval Christian reading, transmitted through Josephus, that the city's ruin fulfilled Christ's own prophecy of its fall, which is why the poet ends on it being profetizado and then certificado by Jesus. Titus is only the sword; the hand is God's.
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