Inês Holds Up Her Children
Read the full text in our reader
Vês aqui trago as vidas inocentes Dos filhos sem pecado e da consorte; Se a peitos generosos e excelentes, Dos fracos satisfaz a fera morte. Vês aqui as mãos e a língua delinquentes: Nelas sós exprimenta toda a sorte De tormentos, de mortes, pelo estilo De Cínis e do touro de Perilo "!--
"See, here I bring the innocent lives of my sinless children and of the wife; if fierce death is satisfied by the weak rather than by generous and excellent hearts— see here the guilty hands and the tongue: on these alone try out every kind of torment, of deaths, in the fashion of Sinis and of the bull of Perillus!"
In the Inês de Castro episode, the condemned Inês pleads before King Afonso IV, offering her own body in place of her innocent children.
Inês, condemned and about to be killed, holds up her children before the king and offers her own body in their place. She turns the executioners' own logic against them: since death already preys on the helpless, let it take her—her hands, her tongue—and spare the innocent. It is pure plea, all offered flesh, with no argument left but her own throat.
The sting is in the two names. She calls her own hands and tongue "delinquentes," guilty—her only crime being that she loved, so the instruments of that love are ironically named the culprits. And the tortures she dares them to use both recoil on their makers: Sinis the pine-bender was torn apart by his own trick, and Perillus, who cast the bronze bull for the tyrant Phalaris, was the first man roasted inside it. She is telling the king that whatever engine of death he builds will convict him, not her.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Os Lusíadas 3.39 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the Os Lusíadas — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Os Lusíadas 3.39 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/lusiadas/3.39/