A Shepherd Rome Could Not Tame
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Desta o pastor nasceu, que no seu nome Se vê que de homem forte os feitos teve; Cuja fama ninguém virá que dome, Pois a grande de Roma não se atreve. Esta, o velho que os filhos próprios come Por decreto do Céu, ligeiro e leve, Veio a fazer no mundo tanta parte, Criando-a Reino ilustre; e foi desta arte:
From this land was born the shepherd whose very name shows that he had the deeds of a strong man; his fame is one that no one will ever come to tame, since not even mighty Rome dares to try. This land the old god who devours his own children — by decree of Heaven, swift and light — came to make so great a part of the world, raising it into an illustrious Kingdom; and it happened in this way:
Narrating Europe's geography and lineage to the king of Malindi, Gama reaches Lusitania and names its founders: the shepherd-hero Viriato, and Saturn, the old god who settled the land.
The stanza pivots from a stretch of land to two figures who give it stature. First the shepherd Viriato, whose name (from Latin vir, "man") already announces the strong man's deeds he would perform, and whose fame not even Rome could master. Camões folds Portugal's origin into a single boast, and measures it against the one empire every reader recognized.
What a first reader misses is the riddle in line five. "O velho que os filhos próprios come" is not decoration: it is Saturn, the time-god who devoured his own children, whom myth also made the settler of this Iberian region. Camões wants the soil to hold a divine founder and a human hero in the same breath, so the land arrives already "an illustrious Kingdom" before its recorded history has even begun.
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Os Lusíadas 3.22 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/lusiadas/3.22/